


Sweet Child of Mine

by Rainne



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (twirls) i regret nothing!, F/M, If you don't like OT3 I got bad news for you, Kid Fic, MORE SHIPPING, OT3 HAS ARRIVED, Prompt Fic, background Clintasha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 29,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Accidental Baby Acquisition Level: Bucky Barnes</p><p>-or-</p><p>How Bucky Barnes accidentally became a dad and what happened afterward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Accidental Baby Acquisition Level: Bucky Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> So, this started out as a sort of self-indulgent crackfic, as encouraged and abetted by [Secondalto](http://archiveofourown.org/users/secondalto/pseuds/secondalto) and [Citymusings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/citymusings/pseuds/citymusings). It's turned into a sort of long-term exercise in self-indulgence that I like to poke when I'm in a mood or place to write, but I don't have the time or the mental capacity to work on anything more serious. Expect lots of cuteness and awws and feels of the happy fuzzy bunny type.
> 
> Also, I am accepting _non-shippy_ prompts for this 'verse. If you have a prompt, leave it in the comments. :)
> 
>  _DO NOT_ expect regular updates for this story. I have several scenes already written, but this is NOT a regular sort of fic and I don't expect or want it to become one. This is self-indulgent play.

The house is tiny, rundown, isolated. It's both exactly the kind of place and exactly _not_ the kind of place you'd expect to find a bunch of HYDRA agents hiding out with stolen alien tech. The paperwork says the place belongs to Jessica and Wade Cleve, but Wade is a farmer and Jessica is a homemaker and neither of them have any family or anything like a regular close circle of friends and nobody in town can really tell them anything about Jessica or Wade except that they haven't seen Wade down at the co-op recently. They go in prepared for the worst, and that's what they find. There are five HYDRA agents, seven crates of stolen tech, and two corpses. 

Once the HYDRA goons are taken care of - two body bags, three sets of cuffs - they give the house a careful going-over. The only thing out of the ordinary is the nursery; it clearly indicates that the Cleves had a baby girl, a very new one judging by the clothing and supplies, but there appears to be no baby in residence. One of the HYDRA goons, when questioned gently (that is to say, lifted up by his throat at the end of a bionic arm and “accidentally” slammed against a tree once or twice) swears that they never saw any baby; just the man and the woman.

McBryde says she'll check around in the town, find out if there's anyone who might have taken the Cleves' baby for the night and still have it. Steve goes to oversee the packing up of the crates onto a SHIELD van. Bucky, unsettled, prowls the house.

He starts in the basement, poking at boxes without any real curiosity about their contents; they're labeled with things like “Wade's Family Home Videos” and “Christmas Decorations.” He comes upstairs, wanders through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room. Something isn't right. He checks the little den that Wade was apparently using as an office. There's nothing there.

He prowls up the stairs, peeks into the spare bedroom where the HYDRA guys were keeping the crates. It's empty; just a blandly decorated guest room. He checks the baby's room again. It's as he's stepping out into the hallway that he finally hears something. His head jerks up, automatically tracking the sound, and he makes his way on silent feet down the hall to the master bedroom.

This is where the Cleves were when HYDRA took possession of their house; the bodies are gone now, but there's still blood everywhere. He drops to one knee and peers under the bed. There's nothing there, not even dust bunnies. Jessica Cleve must have been a very meticulous housekeeper. He rises, checks the free-standing wardrobe. Nothing. He checks the en suite bathroom; it's empty.

Then he hears it again, and in two strides, he's across the room, tearing at the drywall. There's a hidden panel in the wall, and from its shape and size it used to be a dumbwaiter. Whoever closed it over did one hell of a job hiding it; even he never would have noticed it, and he's famous for seeing everything. He doesn't even bother to search for whatever hidden switch opens the door, just digs his metal fingers into the wall and rips it out.

The baby is lying on the shelf inside the hidden panel, next to a cigar box that holds Jessica Cleve's two pieces of “good” jewelry, the Cleves' wills and insurance papers, and a few hundred bucks of emergency cash. He thinks that her parents must have heard the intruders and stashed her in there to keep her safe; that's the only reason she's alive now. If the HYDRA goons had known she was there, they'd have killed her along with Wade and Jessica. She's been there for some time; she's filthy from diaper overflow and not breathing well.

He reaches into the hole and tucks his right hand under her tiny body, drawing her out and cradling her against himself. She squeaks, waving her little fists weakly, and he can't help but smile as she starts to breathe a little better now that she's out in the fresh air. He moves out into the hallway and bellows for Steve.

Steve comes to the foot of the stairs and sees the bundle in Bucky's arms. His eyes go wide. Bucky says, “Check the kitchen for milk or formula. She's starvin'.”

Steve nods and heads straight for the kitchen. Bucky carries the baby into her room, lays her down on the changing table. It is the work of only a few moments to have her cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothing, and Bucky's thankful for his strong stomach because this poor child has been lying in filth for at least a day. He goes heavy on the baby powder before applying a clean diaper, and there may be a moment of hilarity when the self-sticking tabs get stuck to his metal arm, but nobody was there to see it so he's not admitting to anything. Once she's clean and diapered, he pops her into a little play suit and hoists her up against his right shoulder.

Her breathing has improved enough that she's squawking for food now, but Steve can warm a bottle like nobody's business, and he's holding it out to Bucky when Bucky comes through the door. “Take her,” Bucky says, and Steve does, resting the baby against his own shoulder and popping the bottle's nipple into the baby's mouth. Bucky goes outside to advise McBryde of this new development before she goes into town.

By the time he gets back inside, the baby is shrieking and refusing the bottle, and Steve looks frantic. “What do I do?”

Bucky gives a rough sigh. “You never did know how to talk to a dame right, punk,” he growls. He grabs a clean, soft kitchen towel and wraps it around his metal arm, then reaches out. “Give her here.”

Steve hands her over, and Bucky cradles the baby properly, her head resting on his left arm, her ear against his heartbeat. He strokes her downy head with the fingers of his right hand, murmuring soft things under the sound of her cries. Then he takes the bottle from Steve and runs the nipple across the baby's lips. Instinctively, she makes a little sucking face, and her cries die down. He does it again, getting the same response, and then again. Then he slides it into her mouth and she latches on.

McBryde steps into the room. “Impressive,” she says, with a carefully straight face. “Everything's loaded on the van. Do you want to call social services and wait here for them, or just carry her to the local sheriff?”

Steve looks at Bucky.

Bucky looks at Steve.

They both look down at the baby that lies contentedly in Bucky's arms, emptying the bottle.

Bucky clears his throat. And he says, “I'll take her.”


	2. The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter

Tony puts his lawyers on the case within a half-hour of Steve and Bucky's return. The search is thorough, and it takes a few days, but at the end of it, the news is good. Wade Cleve appears to have had no family at all after his parents' death; Jessica has a set of living cousins, but they already have four children of their own and are utterly uninterested in becoming responsible for her baby. It takes very little time for Tony's lawyers to convince them to give up their rights, and within four days of being pulled out of a wall, the baby officially becomes the child of James Buchanan Barnes.

“Do you want to keep her given names, or change them?” the lawyer asks, sitting at Bucky's kitchen table as he fills out the paperwork.

Bucky, who is setting up the brand-new crib with the same expression he uses when he disassembles his favorite Dragunov, looks up. “Um.” He hadn't thought of that. The name her parents gave her is Jean Anne, which Bucky feels is frankly uninspired, but he hasn't been calling her by her name anyway. Nobody has. She gets called everything from Beautiful and Dollface (Steve) to Squirt and Munchkin (Tony), to Little Bug (Clint) and Sweetheart (Bruce) and Babochka (Natasha, who speaks exclusively in Russian to the child, because it's never too early to become bilingual).

He casts a glance over at the child, who is sleeping in the soft, collapsible travel crib that was his stopgap measure, and he thinks about what to call her. He himself has yet to call her by any sort of name. Oh, he talks to her; he talks to her all the time when they're alone, standing in front of the huge windows in his apartment and staring out at the city that's so different from the way it was when he was born, and telling her about all the wonderful things she'll have that he and Steve never did. Telling her about his hopes and dreams, and even about his fears and his nightmares because she's too young to understand anything but the tone of voice he uses and the fact that his arms are warm and safe.

But he hasn't called her by name.

He sits there for a moment, studying her as she sleeps and thinking about names. He himself has had a few in his life - and there was a time when he didn't have any at all - and he knows that names are important. When he first started to come back from being the Winter Soldier, it had physically hurt every time Steve called him Bucky - something in his conditioning actually connected a pain response to that name. As much as it had hurt both of them, he'd had to beg Steve to stop calling him that. For a time, he was James to some and Barnes to others. But Tony had brought in a team of dedicated and highly skilled individuals to work with him on breaking the conditioning, and he'd healed, and gradually he had become Bucky again. Not the same Bucky - he'd never be the same again - but maybe, sometimes, a better one.

He says, “Stephanie. Middle name Faith. Second middle name Yakovlevna.” He spells the Russian patronymic carefully.

The lawyer nods. Then he holds out a pen. “All I need now is your signature.”

Bucky sets aside the crib slat in his hands and comes to the table. He looks over the paperwork carefully, nods, and signs where appropriate. The lawyer gathers his papers and stands. “I'll have all of this filed with the courts before close of business today,” he assures him. “Your copies will come by messenger tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says. He shakes the lawyer's hand, shows him to the door, and watches him head down the hallway with rapidly officious steps.

He returns to his work on the crib, and has just barely finished and turned the thing right side up when the baby wakes. She doesn't cry; he is the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes, and she waves her hands at him instead, cooing for his attention. He picks her up, checks and then changes her diaper, and gets a bottle out of the warmer. Resting her against his carefully-covered metal arm, her ear against his chest, he pops the nipple into her mouth and goes to the window, looking out onto the city of his birth. “Okay, Steffie,” he says softly. “Here goes nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am accepting _non-shippy_ prompts for this 'verse; if you have 'em, leave 'em in the comments. :)


	3. Thunderstruck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For icingontopthecake, who requested Thor being cute with the baby.

Thor comes back from Asgard about three weeks after Bucky officially becomes a dad. His arrival is heralded by a thunderstorm out of a clear blue sky, as usual, and the crashing wakes Steffie from a sound sleep. Thor hears the baby's crying from the common area and, since nobody was there to greet him, follows it to Bucky's apartment.

He taps on the door, which is ajar, and it swings open wide enough that he can see Bucky standing there with the baby in his arms, rubbing her back and murmuring soothingly into her ear. “It's okay, sweetheart,” Bucky is murmuring. “It's just thunder. That happens sometimes. It can't hurt you. I promise.”

“Friend James,” Thor rumbles, his voice softer than Bucky has ever heard it before. “You have a child now? I have missed much, it seems!”

Bucky turns toward the door and grins. “Hey, Thor,” he says. “Come on in and meet my baby girl.”

Thor enters, smiling broadly, and reaches out with his huge hands. “May I hold her?”

“Course,” Bucky replies. Steffie's cries have finally ceased, so he lifts her and places her gently in Thor's arms. Thor, well versed in the art of baby-holding, cradles her tiny form against his chest, supporting her head and neck carefully, even as he stares down at her.

“She is most beautiful,” the Asgardian murmurs. “Tell me, though, how has this occurred? I have only been gone for two of your months.”

Bucky tells Thor the story - he likes to say that it's the story of how he got his girl - and when he's done, Thor nods firmly. “You have done a good thing,” he says. “She will be good for you, and you for her.”

“I hope so,” Bucky replies. He takes a deep breath. “I worry, ya know? What with everything...” He gestures eloquently with his metal hand. “Sometimes I think, what the hell am I doin'? I ain't cut out to be a dad. I'm so screwed up in the head, sometimes I can barely take care of _me_ , so what am I doin' with a baby? But then somethin' will happen, like maybe somethin' makes her cry, and when I pick her up she stops cryin' because it's like she already knows I'll do whatever it takes, you know? And I just...” He clears his throat, feeling his eyes prickle. “It's only been three weeks, ya know? And already I can't imagine not havin' her. Like I can't even remember what my life was before her.”

“I take well your meaning, my friend,” Thor says softly, smiling down at the child in his arms and offering her a finger to play with. “I have children as well.”

Bucky blinks. “You do? I didn't know that.”

Thor nods, grinning as Steffie, after a couple of tries, finally grabs his finger. “Ah!” he murmurs, letting her pull the digit toward her mouth. “There is always such surprising strength in their tiny hands.” He plays with her for a moment more before saying, “I have two sons, Magni and Módi, and a daughter, Thrúd.”

“Are they still little?” Bucky wonders. “I mean, you guys live for a long time compared to us, right?”

“We do, yes. But they are no longer small. The lads are mighty warriors now, and Thrúd serves with the other Valkyrie in Valhalla.”

“Huh.” Bucky looks down at his tiny daughter, nestled so safely in Thor's strong hands. “It's hard,” he says after a moment. “Bein' a dad, I mean.”

“It is,” Thor agreed. “Especially to a tiny, lovely girl. One thinks constantly of the world and its difficulties, and how utterly impossible it will be to keep her safe and innocent forever.”

Bucky nods. “Yeah,” he says, his voice a bit hoarse.

Thor gives him a smile. “But we do what we can and what we must, to make it a safer place for her, and for all the other little girls whose fathers worry as we do. You cannot always hold her up, my friend, but you can dry her tears if she falls.”


	4. O Brave New World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for citymusings, who asked for Bucky in need of a babysitter.

Pepper looks up from her desk at the sound of her assistant tapping on the office door. “Yes, Jackie?”

“Miss Potts, I'm sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Barnes is here and he says it's an Avengers-related emergency.”

Pepper's eyebrows go up. Nobody could possibly be hurt yet; the call to assemble just went through five minutes ago. “Send him in, Jackie.”

When Bucky steps through the door, his face desperate, Pepper knows immediately what the trouble is. “Bucky, of course,” she says before he can even speak, rising and holding her hands out for the baby.

“God, thank you,” he mutters, handing the infant over. “I'm such an idiot, it never even _occurred_ to me that I needed to find someone to mind her when I got called out.” He shakes his head. “Ma always just knocked on the neighbor's door and asked 'em to keep an ear out for us, if she had to run off someplace.”

Pepper smiles gently. “Has she had her shots yet?”

“Yeah, I had her at the pediatrician Monday,” he says. “First round. Gotta do more of 'em in like six months or something. She screamed her head off, poor thing. But hey, he says she won't ever get polio, so that's a load off.”

Pepper chuckles before realizing that he's serious. Wow. “All right. You know, you're lucky that you work for a Fortune 100 company with a forward-thinking CEO.” When he quirks an eyebrow at her, Pepper explains, “We have a daycare facility right here in the tower, Bucky.”

He stares at her in shock. “Are you kiddin' me?”

She shakes her head. “Not a bit. The entire fifteenth floor was designed specifically for that purpose. It's a fully staffed and accredited center for infants through preschool age children, and also offers after-school care for school-age kids. Most of the employees who have children utilize it.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “The hell will they think of next?”

Pepper smirks. “How about a pill a woman can take every day that gives her a ninety-nine percent chance of not getting pregnant?”

Bucky scoffs. “That'll be the day,” he begins, and when he catches the look on her face, his jaw drops. “No way. You're  _serious_ ?”

“Oh, Bucky,” she says, patting him on the arm. “You've still got a lot to catch up on.” She smiles. “Now, I'll handle Steffie. You go assemble; they're probably waiting for you at this point. The daycare is open twenty-four hours a day, but if you're not back by the time I get ready to head home, I'll pick her up and take her with me. Okay?”

He nods, pauses, then leans over and presses a scratchy, stubbly kiss to Pepper's cheek. “You are legitimately the best, Pepper,” he says. He bends and presses his lips to the baby's downy head one last time, and then he's gone.

Shaking her head, Pepper picks up the diaper bag. “I'm running down to fifteen, Jackie,” she tells her assistant. “Take messages until I get back.”

“Yes, Miss Potts.”


	5. It Only Hurts When...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For wlk68, who requested Clint Barton: Baby Whisperer

He's making his way through the air vents when he hears the baby crying, and he takes the next left turn, heading in the direction of Barnes's place. As he gets closer, over the sound of squalling, he hears Barnes talking. The slight Doppler effect tells him that Bucky is making circles around the living room, walking the baby, trying to get her to settle, but the words he's hearing - and their exhausted tone - tell him that it isn't helping.

He drops down out of the vent feet first; he usually prefers a more acrobatic entrance, but he's found that it's best to let Barnes know he's coming before just appearing. He startles easily, and that can sometimes end badly. He pops the vent cover back into place and reaches for the baby. “Here,” he says. “Let me take her. You look like you're about to fall over.”

Bucky gives her up immediately and flops into a chair, a testament to how exhausted he must really be, and the shock of being transferred startles Steffie enough that she stops crying for a moment, focusing her big brown eyes on Clint's face. Then her expression crumples and she begins wailing again. Bucky's head drops back against the back of the chair. “Man, I dunno what else to do. I changed her, I fed her, I burped her, I sang to her, I put a movie on, I turned the movie off, I put on music, I turned the music off. She spit out her pacifier. She threw the damn bear across the room. She doesn't have a fever. What the hell's the matter with her?”

Clint turns just right, and the light from the hallway washes the inside of Steffie's wide-open mouth. He stops still, lifting her just a little, and then he gently tugs on her bottom lip. “She's teething,” Clint says.

Bucky raises his head, staring at Clint. “How the hell you know that?”

Clint grins, heading into the kitchen with the baby against his shoulder. “When I was a kid, me and my brother Barney ran away and joined the circus. We started off working as roustabouts, but I was younger and cuter, so I sometimes made a little extra money doing this or that.” He pauses for a moment, banging through the cabinets. “Well, one of the things I ended up doing a lot of was minding the contortionists' kids. Believe me, I learned all _kinds_ of things about babies.”

“Yeah? You learn what to do about teething?”

Clint snorts. “Yeah. Go to the damn store and get some teething rings. In the meantime, though.” He pulls a square bottle down out of the upper cabinet and grabs two rocks glasses, into which he pours very healthy portions of amber liquid. He pushes one of these in Bucky's direction. “Bottoms up, Poppa.”

Then he sticks his index finger into the glass he'd kept for himself. He barely wets the tip of his finger before running that fingertip across Steffie's bottom gumline, then repeats the action on her top gum. Within just a few seconds, her screeching has stopped, settling into low sniffles and then soft hiccups. Bucky stares. “The hell.”

Clint smirks. “The mommy bloggers would lose their collective minds, but I promise you, your mama did exactly the same thing to you back in the day. She didn't have frozen teething rings to keep you happy, so she made do with what she had.”

Bucky laughs, toasting Clint and taking a sip of the whiskey in his glass. “That's true,” he says. “In fact, you know, I remember Steve's Ma givin' him whiskey with lemon and honey for his cough.” He grins. “Cure what ails ya.”

Clint looks down at the baby, who was rapidly falling asleep in his arms now that her sore gums are numbed. “That's a fact,” he replies, grinning back. “Still, you'll probably wanna get some of those freezable things.”

“Yeah, I'll go this afternoon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still accepting _non-shippy_ prompts for this 'verse. Leave 'em in the comments! :)


	6. Welcome to the Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is actually one of the first scenes I wrote for this 'verse. Enjoy! :)

The first time he meets Darcy Lewis, it's two o'clock in the morning and he's out of milk. He'd have known he was out of milk if he'd been paying closer attention to the refrigerator, but Steffie's been running a low-grade fever and he thought there was another gallon in the back but there isn't. And in his defense, he tried to put a shirt on before leaving his apartment, but Steffie didn't want to be put down, and he thought everyone else was asleep. So, clad only in black jeans and with a miserable, whining six-month-old in his arms, Bucky makes his way down the hall to the communal kitchen for milk.

He'd forgotten about the arrival of Thor's girl and her assistant, who'd flown in from London that day. Apparently still on GMT, Darcy is wide awake, reading something on a StarkPad at the kitchen counter. She looks up when he walks in and frankly gapes. “Jesus Christ,” she says, taking him in. “I can't decide if I want to take you home and cuddle you to death or screw you through the mattress.” And then her brain catches up with her mouth and she flushes bright red.

He blinks at her, too tired and preoccupied to take his usual joy in making her pay for that. “Bucky Barnes,” he says simply. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Sorry. I'm really sorry. I don't know what came over me; I can usually keep my inside thoughts inside more effectively than that.” She runs a hand across her face. “Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster's assistant.”

Steffie chooses that moment to whine again, and he crosses to the refrigerator, pulling the milk out with his bionic arm. Darcy's brows draw together. “It's none of my business, but does she have a fever?”

Bucky blinks at her. “Yeah, little bit. Why?”

“Don't know if anyone's told you this, but milk can make 'em sicker when they've got a fever. It can curdle in her stomach and make her throw up.”

He looks down at the carton in his hand and sighs. “Shit.” He looks up at her. “The hell am I supposed to give her?”

“Do you have any Pedialyte?”

“No.” He drops the milk carton on the counter and scrubs at his face, then looks down at the baby. “You coulda come with an instruction book, you know.”

  
Darcy laughs softly. “Sit down,” she says, vacating her stool at the counter and entering the kitchen. “Let me see what I can do.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You got kids?”

“Five little brothers and sisters,” Darcy replies. “And a single mom. So yeah, I might as well say I got kids.” She disappears into the pantry, coming back out again a minute later with a banana, an apple, and a sleeve of crackers. “She eating any solids yet?”

“Yeah, some. Mostly stuff in jars from the store, you know?” He takes Darcy's vacated stool and watches as she deposits the apple and the banana on the counter and approaches with the crackers. She reaches out to run a gentle hand over Steffie's head, the backs of her fingers resting at the girl's temple for just a moment to gauge her fever. This is clearly a woman who knows what she's doing.

  
Darcy smiles slightly, opens the sleeve, and offers Steffie a Saltine. Steffie takes it and gums at it disinterestedly. Darcy smiles even wider. “She's got a little appetite; that's a good sign.” Then she hunts up the food processor. She peels the apple, dices it, and drops it in, turning it pretty effectively into mush, which goes into a bowl; then she cuts several slices of the banana, dropping them onto a little plate. She brings all of this over and sets it on the counter. “Bananas, rice, apples, and toast. BRAT. Best thing for her right now.” She drops a spoon into the bowl of mushed apple, grins at him, and goes to wash up.

Bucky feeds Steffie little bites of the mashed apple - she's more interested in that than in the cracker, though she doesn't let go of the cracker - and bits of banana as well. She doesn't eat much before she lays her head back down on his collarbone again, whining softly. Darcy gives him a gentle smile. “The bubblegum flavored children's Tylenol is the best way to go,” she advises him. “The grape has a weird aftertaste and the so-called cherry will make her weep and say things like 'but Daddy, if you loved me, you wouldn't make me drink that.'”

He laughs. “I'll definitely keep that in mind.” Steffie falls asleep with a sigh and he takes the cracker out of her hand before she can drop it. “So, how long are you and Jane in town for?”

“Indefinitely,” Darcy says. “Tony's trying to recruit Jane so that Thor will relocate his home base here instead of London, and she's finally willing to listen because he's said magic words that have to do with high-powered telescope relays and some observatory upstate that she can have unlimited access to.”

“So you're, what, along for the ride?”

She nods, leaning against the counter. “Pretty much,” she admits. “I was only supposed to work for Jane for a semester, to get my science credits, but the most amazing shit keeps happening to and around her and I've reached a point where I just really, really don't want to miss whatever's going to happen next.” She grins.

He laughs. “I know that feeling,” he admits. “I got a buddy like that. It's not really his fault, but shit just keeps happening. I turned my back on the skinny little punk for six months to go off to war and he turned into Captain America.”


	7. (When You Wake Up It Will Be) The Beginning of the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for my beloved braintwin, Secondalto, who (on the occasion of her birthday) asked for Steffie's first birthday celebration. <3
> 
> Chapter title from "Happy Birthday" by The Innocence Mission.

Tony Stark is a grade-A douchebag. He's rude, prying, sarcastic, and sometimes flat-out dangerous to know and be around. He's irresponsible as hell, and he builds robots that are just as dangerous as he is. And anyone who dares to say such a thing in the presence of Bucky Barnes is cruising for a bruising.

There are very few people on the planet that Bucky would trust absolutely, with his life or the life of his child. One of those people is Steve. Darcy and Pepper are also on the list. So is Tony Stark.

Bucky is under no illusions about his perceived fitness to raise a child; had he attempted to navigate his way through the system unassisted, or with the kind of legal help he could afford or knew how to procure, Steffie would be someone else's baby right now. But when he walked into Tony's workshop that first day (when she was so tiny and helpless in his arms) and asked Tony for help, Tony had called his legal team and said three simple words: “Make it happen.” And it had happened, and Steffie was his.

On her first birthday, Steffie has been his for almost ten months. He has watched her learn to grab things, learn to hug, learn to play peek-a-boo. He has watched her learn to sit up and crawl, to pull herself up using his hands or the couch or the side of her crib. Most recently, he has watched her take her first stumbling steps, and had the unmistakable joy of hearing her tiny voice cry out for her Dadda.

On her first birthday, Steffie stands up in her crib at sunrise and squawks at her Dadda until he rolls over in his bed and pushes up on his metal arm, shoving his hair out of his face with his other hand and blinking blearily at her. “Just because it's your birthday doesn't mean we have to get up at the ass crack, Dollface.”

“Dad- _da_!” she whines, making little pre-jumping motions. He groans and shoves himself out of bed, takes two steps across the bedroom, and hoists her out of her crib. Then he turns around and takes two steps back, dropping her onto the pillows. She squeals in delight and burrows herself under his covers while he retrieves her Bucky Bear - _very funny, Steve_ \- and he climbs back into bed, wondering if she'll settle down enough for him to get another hour or so of rest. She does, thankfully - snuggles up against his right side with her bear in one hand and pops the other thumb in her mouth. He wraps his arm around her, holding her close, and she sighs softly, closing her eyes and dropping right back to sleep.

He doesn't sleep - he still has the occasional nightmare, so actually sleeping with her in the bed would be a Very Dangerous Thing - but he does doze, which is good enough. He gets a couple good hours in that way, and when she wakes up again, he forces himself out of bed. She goes into her bouncy chair while he showers, and then he carries her into the kitchen for breakfast - she gets rice cereal and fruit; he gets eggs and toast, and then they both get dressed for the day.

He's off today. No briefings or debriefings, no calls, and (barring alien incursion or similar major planet-wide emergency) no Avenging. Just all day to spend with his baby girl, who's a whole year old today.

He spends all morning playing with her, watching her toddle around, putting on her favorite Muppets movie to watch her laugh and clap at the screen. They build towers with blocks and he reads her stories, and around lunchtime he decides that a trip to the park is just what his little princess needs to round off her day. So he gets them both dressed in going-outdoors clothes - jeans, plain blue t-shirt and blue hoodie for himself, and for her, jeans, a green t-shirt declaring _I void warranties_ that was a recent gift from Uncle Clint, and a blue hoodie with Cap's shield emblazoned on the back. He packs the diaper bag - a regular backpack, because he may be a devoted dad but he has limits - with a change of clothes, a few toys, a snack, some diapers (of course), and hats for both of them just in case. He doesn't think they'll be needed - it's fall, but not really cold yet - but you never know.

Swinging her up into his arms, he tucks the papoose carrier into his back pocket, shoulders the bag, and heads out. Natasha stops him in the common room. “Where are you two headed?”

“Park,” Bucky tells her. “Seems like a good day for it, before it gets too cold.”

“Wait a bit,” Natasha says.

He frowns. “For what?”

“Because I asked you to, Barnes!” she snaps. Then she holds out her hands to Steffie, wiggling her fingers. “Идисюда,милаядевушка **.** ”

Steffie leans for her, and Bucky lets her go, dropping the backpack in an out of the way corner. Natasha stretches out on the couch with Steffie sitting on her stomach, murmuring to her in Russian as they play pat-a-cake. Bucky drops into a chair nearby, watching them. Just a few minutes later, Clint arrives, and he's followed shortly thereafter by Darcy, who is towing Jane, Thor, and Bruce along with her. Bucky begins to suspect something is up. His suspicion gets deeper a few minutes later when Pepper arrives, seating herself like a queen beside Natasha so that she can join in playing with Steffie. Bucky settles into his chair, waiting to see what his teammates have cooked up.

And just a few minutes after that, the elevator dings open, letting Tony and Steve both out - and they are followed by two guys in white uniforms, managing a pushcart.

Bucky feels his eyes get huge as the two guys from the bakery maneuver the cake into the room. It's not massive, exactly, but it _feels_ huge. It's easily the width of four regular sheet cakes and the length of two - not actually a bad idea when you're feeding two super soldiers, the Hulk, and Thor in addition to all the normals - but it's _tall_. In fact, it's a cartoonish representation of the city itself, with a perfectly-sculpted Avengers Tower looming over Manhattan, and tiny figures of each Avenger visible in various places on the cityscape. And there, in the middle of everything, standing proudly on the Tower's wide landing pad, is Bucky himself, leather armor and all, with a little pink-clad Steffie held in his metal arm.

He has to excuse himself to the bathroom for a moment. There's something in his eye.

(It's less endearing several weeks later when he discovers that his daughter's cake - and Tony - have been featured in an episode of _Cake Boss_ , but then, Tony Stark _is_ a grade-A douchebag, so Bucky isn't entirely surprised.)


	8. Angel's Hair and Baby's Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For CupKatyCakes, who requested Steve drawing Steffie while she is napping or drawing Bucky and Steffie napping together and giving this to Bucky as a gift. This actually went all angsty on me and I wasn't expecting it, so, have fun with that. :D

Steffie's first real illness happens when she's fourteen months old. The tower's day care is fantastic, especially when Bucky needs to drop everything and suit up at a moment's notice, and Steffie is learning social skills and how to be around other kids and how not to bash them on the head when they want to play with her train. But the problem with other people's kids is that other people are their parents, and sometimes people who aren't Bucky do things that Bucky considers to be irresponsible and just plain unacceptable. Like, for example, sending their kid to day care when they know good and hell well that he's sick.

It's for the best that Bucky doesn't know which irresponsible _asshole_ it was who dropped an obviously sick kid off at day care, because that parent also dropped off an extremely virulent strain of _streptococcus_ bacteria along with their kid, and Steffie spends two days in the pediatric ICU under sedation with a tube down her throat until the antibiotics finally kick in and the swelling in her throat goes down so that she can breathe on her own again. 

The one bright spot that Bucky can take away from the whole experience occurs on the third (and thankfully last) day of her stay, when she's breathing fine and sitting up and playing a little bit in her bed. That's when all the Avengers, in full costume, swoop down on the children's ward in a surprise visit. The nurses gather all the mobile children in the common play area; the children who are non-mobile for whatever reason (Steffie, for example, is still a little contagious, and there's at least one kid in traction, plus a few of the sicker ones who can't get out of bed) get private visits one by one. Every kid in that ward gets to hug or shake hands with every one of the Avengers that day (and only a couple of them are disappointed to get Bruce Banner and not the Hulk), and Bucky, standing in the doorway of Steffie's private room, watches it all go down with a grin on his face.

He gets to take her home that night, and by the time they get there, they're both exhausted. Bucky is usually opposed to letting Steffie spend a whole lot of time in front of the television - there's a lot of stuff on it that he'd really rather she didn't see - but he reckons this is a special case, and so he puts on the new Muppets movie and they sprawl out on the couch.

They're both fast asleep when Steve comes to check on them; they're still asleep a few minutes later when he returns with his sketch book and his pencil case. The light isn't great for drawing, but Steve's eyes are serum-enhanced, and he makes the most of it. He gets the basic shapes down first: the thick oblong of the extra-long couch, the rectangular plank of Bucky's body, the tiny oval of Steffie's form, curled up on her Dadda's chest.

Then he starts working on the details in the flickering blue light that comes from the screen. He finds everything: the way the cushions squish under Bucky's weight; the stubby, thick head of Steffie's Bucky Bear where it's fallen into the corner of the couch behind Bucky's head; the lines of exhaustion and worry that seem permanently etched onto Bucky's face after the last three days; the loose, lax way Steffie's limbs are arranged in her sprawl. He spends a few minutes getting the ruffle at the cuff of her sleeve right, and another few on the shading where she's drooled a wet spot onto Bucky's stomach.

He works his way from Bucky's feet back towards his head, adding in more details: the hole in the calf of his jeans where he snagged his pant leg on a nail; the way the fabric of his tee shirt is wrinkled and rucked up around his waist; the fall of his shaggy hair against the couch cushion; the rough stubble on his cheeks because Bucky has gotten very into the ruggedly unshaved look that seems to be popular among a certain subset of Avengers fandom. The gleam of amusement (or possibly murder) in his slitted blue eyes as he glares at Steve across the living room.

“Are you drawin' me?”

“Both of you,” Steve replies, unrepentant. “Try not to wake her; I'm not done yet.”

“Jackhole.”

“At least I'm not posting it on Tumblr,” Steve murmurs. He roughs in the stripes on Steffie's leggings and the curl of her bare toes against Bucky's waistband. He finishes with the gentle curl of her hair around the base of her neck, signs and dates the picture, and tears it carefully out of the sketch book, then crosses the room. He hands the drawing to Bucky, lays the sketchbook and pencil box on the coffee table, and lifts Steffie into his arms without ever waking her. She curls into the warmth of his chest and he holds her close, waiting for Bucky to sit up before seating himself on the couch and cradling her in his lap. Her thumb slides into her mouth, but he pulls it back out again, still a little worried about her breathing. He remembers how it was when he couldn't breathe. It's the worst feeling in the world, and he hates that Steffie knows it now too, even though he knows she won't remember it.

Bucky studies the drawing for a long time, his hair falling around his face. When he finally looks up, there are streaks of gleaming wetness running down his face. “That was too close,” he rasps.

Steve reaches out with his free hand, gripping the back of Bucky's neck. Bucky leans into him, resting his forehead against Steve's shoulder, and for just a few minutes, he lets go. When he is able to sit up again, there's a wet spot on the front of Steve's shirt. Neither of them mention it.


	9. Cat's in the Cradle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Citymusings, who asked for snuggles.

When Darcy answers her phone a little after five o'clock on a Thursday, she is absolutely not expecting to hear Pepper Potts's voice on the other end of the line. But that's who she hears, and Pepper's voice has an unusual timbre to it. She sounds... harried. “Darcy, it's Pepper Potts. I'm sorry to bother you, but are you busy tonight?”

“Not really,” Darcy says, reaching for her backpack. “I was actually just getting ready to head home.” Despite having been offered a suite in Avengers' Tower, Darcy had decided to take a little apartment in Brooklyn. She likes the atmosphere, and she likes being in a completely different borough of the city when weird shit starts going down around the Avengers' main base. 

“I need to ask you for a huge favor.”

Darcy blinks. Pepper owing her a favor, especially one categorized as huge, is not anything to sniff at. “Sure, Pepper, what do you need?”

Pepper speaks, and Darcy listens, and gives her agreement. Then she heads into the elevator and presses the button for the fifteenth floor.

The tower's day care center has been ingeniously designed to keep the children safe. There is a wide, bright entry lobby where the elevators - all two of them - open up. There is an intake desk that is always staffed by at least two very competent professionals who are more than capable of shooting the wings off a housefly at three hundred paces. There is one way to get behind the desk, and it is a door that has to be opened from the inside. Behind the desk there is a panic button that summons Security, and the entrance to one ten-foot hallway with steel-reinforced walls that serves as a funnel. At the end of the hallway there is a single door that can only be opened by a combined biometric scan and voice-print identification. Any attempt to open the door without proper authorization results in the immediate lockdown of that ten-foot hallway, by means of adamantium bars that cross both ends of the hallway, effectively imprisoning the unauthorized entrant until Security could arrive. If Security is called, they usually come with at least one Avenger.

Intellectually, Darcy knows all of these things about the day care center. What she doesn't know is how the hell the tower's decorators managed to make one of the most high-security facilities in the world look so freaking cheerful and welcoming. The place is harder to get into - or, for that matter, out of - than a supermax prison. It ought to at least look like it. She shakes her head as she steps out into the bright lobby of the center and smiles at the two women behind the reception desk. “Hey Tracy, Carrie.”

“Darcy!” Carrie acknowledges her. “You must be here for Steffie Barnes.”

“Yeah, Bucky's out Avengering and Pepper's gotten called to L.A. for an emergency stockholders' meeting. She's probably getting on a plane as we speak.”

“Ugh,” Tracy grunts, getting up to get Steffie's paperwork folder. “You could not pay me enough to put up with those people. My dad wanted me to go into Business Administration, you know,” she admits, sliding the check-out sheet to Darcy through a slot in the bulletproof screen. “He was pissed when I went into Early Childhood Education. Said it was a waste of time and I'd never get paid enough to keep soul and body together.”

Darcy laughs, signing the sheet and handing it back. “And look at you now,” she says.

“Exactly,” Tracy replies, grinning. She walks over to the door and punches in her security code, pulling the door open to let Darcy come through. Darcy feels a slight tingle as she passes through the weapon detector, and then Tracy is pushing the door shut again. 

“Hey, we should have a night out sometime soon,” Carrie says, leaning back in her chair. “There's a new club that just opened up nearby my apartment.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Darcy agrees. “Text me with a day's lead time and I'll be there.”

“Awesome.” They share a fist-bump as Darcy passes, and Tracy leads her down the hallway, providing her retinal scan and her voice-print at the door. It clicks, unlocks, and swings open, and Darcy steps through. Tracy pulls it shut behind her.

The interior of the day care is just as bright as the lobby. It is divided into five sections: one room for infants and toddlers up to two years old, one for twos and threes, one for fours and fives, one for older children who come for after-school care, and one very, very large playground that contains, in addition to regular playground equipment like slides and swings, a climbing wall, a huge trampoline, a massive jungle gym, and all sorts of other equipment. Darcy remembers the first time she saw it, and the deep burn of jealousy that had settled somewhere in her chest. She wanted to play in that playground herself!

For now, though, she'll settle for picking up Steffie and getting her home and fed. She heads for the littles' section, where a sign on the door requests that all entrants knock and wait for the door to be opened from inside. There have, Darcy knows, been a couple of occasions where people entered without warning and a tiny head got bumped by the door, or a tiny hand trod on, because no matter how careful a caretaker might be, it only takes a split-second of a turned back for a newly-mobile toddler to walk themselves right into danger.

She knocks on the door and waits. A moment later, the door opens, and Darcy smiles at the man who opened it. “Hey, Teddy.”

“Hi, Darcy!” he greets her. “Come on in.”

Darcy enters, smiling at the sight of all the kids playing. “Aww. It's like a puppy store.”

Teddy laughs. “Sure, just pick out the one you want.”

Darcy grins, her eyes scanning the room until she finds the child she was looking for. “Steffie!” she calls out.

The little girl, who was currently motoring her way across the room in a baby-walker, stops in her tracks, her head swiveling. She sees Darcy and her eyes light up, her hands going into the air in a silent demand to be picked up. Darcy, cautious of the other tiny people on the floor, crosses the room and swoops the little girl up into her arms. “Hey, Squiggle!” she greets.

Steffie babbles happily at her, patting Darcy's face, and Darcy presses a kiss to the girl's forehead. Then she looks over at Teddy. “Does anything need to go home?”

Teddy hands her a small zippered bag. “Fortunately it was a lunch accident and not a diaper accident.”

Darcy laughs. “That's always good news. Well, better get her home and some dinner inside her.” With a smile, Teddy lets her out of the room. She pushes a button at the exit door and Carrie comes to unlock it and let her out, smiling and waving at Steffie as they leave. 

Once on the elevator, Darcy leans back against the wall, Steffie in her arms. The little girl looks up at her very seriously. “Dadda?” she asks.

“Your Daddy's working,” Darcy says. “He'll be home soon. I'm gonna make you dinner and then we can watch a movie, okay?”

“Tay,” Steffie replies, a dubious expression on her face. “Dadda.”

“I forgot how frustrating the pre-vocabulary days can be,” Darcy murmurs to herself.

Dinner is easy enough; Steffie will eat almost anything put in front of her, and tonight Darcy gives her half of a grilled cheese sandwich (cut into bite sized pieces), several apple slices, and a scoop of lima beans. She eats until she is full, and Darcy puts the leftovers away, cleans up the kitchen, and then swoops the little girl down the hall for her bath. Once that is done, they settle down onto the couch and Darcy puts on Muppets Take Manhattan. 

Steffie, who has been in generally good spirits, if quiet, all evening, looks up at Darcy from her play mat. “Dardar.”

“Yes, honey?”

“Dadda.”

“Daddy will be home soon,” Darcy assures her. I hope, she adds mentally. Bucky has only gone on a couple of overnight ops since adopting Steffie - mostly because he's been put on a modified light duty schedule in lieu of taking six months' paternity leave - but she has a feeling he is going to be back on a regular rotation pretty soon, and that means overnights and longer. She wonders if he has a contingency plan for that, since Pepper, while as fond of Steffie as everyone else, is unlikely to be willing to take the girl on for days at a time.

Steffie watches the movie for a little while, and plays with her toys for a little while, and in between, she asks for her Dadda several times. Finally, frustrated with Darcy's continued refusal to produce him, she knocks over the block tower Darcy was helping her build, takes a deep breath, and screams for him at the top of her lungs, flinging herself down into the pile of blocks in a fantastic tantrum.

Darcy swoops the child up into her arms, holding her close to stop her from hurting herself. “Shh,” she murmurs, rubbing Steffie's back. “Daddy will be home soon, I promise. Just settle down, baby, okay? I know you miss him and you want him. He'll be home soon.”

But Steffie is having none of it, and her shrieks soon turn into full-on weeping, crying out for her Dadda between sobs. Darcy's heart breaks again and again as she tries to reassure the girl that her daddy is coming and he'll be home soon, and Steffie is having none of it.

Not for the first time, Darcy wonders about memory and the nature of memory, and whether or not Steffie, at just over a year old, has any memories of the parents who'd loved her for the first couple of months of her life, who had vanished from it suddenly and without explanation, leaving her frightened and alone in a tiny cabinet where she'd very nearly suffocated to death, saved only by a fortuitous cry and Bucky Barnes's serum-enhanced hearing. 

Once the first wave of her fury ebbs, Steffie tires quickly, and Darcy just holds the girl in her arms, pacing the floor in front of the windows and rubbing her back as she hiccups, occasionally sniffling wetly and calling for her Dadda. Just about the time the movie ends, she falls asleep in Darcy's arms.

Just a few minutes after that, as Darcy is contemplating whether or not attempting to put the baby down will wake her up, the door opens. Darcy turns just in time to see Bucky enter the room, dirty and tired and battle-worn. His shoulders slump with exhaustion as he enters, but when he sees Darcy standing there with Steffie in her hands, a beautiful smile crosses his face and he straightens, coming over and reaching out to run his human hand over the back of Steffie's head. “She's already asleep,” he murmurs, sounding a bit disappointed.

“Only just,” Darcy replies, her voice equally soft. “She cried herself to sleep wanting you.”

He swallows hard, his heart in his eyes, and she smiles up at him. “Go take a quick shower; you smell like ozone and gunpowder.”

He nods, heading down the hall. Ten minutes later he is back, his hair wet and pushed back from his face, his uniform replaced with a tee shirt and clean sweats. Darcy rubs Steffie's back gently, murmuring in her ear. “Steffie,” she sing-songs. “Daddy's home.”

Steffie snuffles wetly into Darcy's shoulder, then raises her head blearily, looking around. When her eyes fall on Bucky, she lights up, throwing her arms out to him. “Dadda!”

“Hey, baby girl,” he says, reaching out to take her and cuddle her close. “Hey. Daddy missed you.”

She smacks a wet kiss onto his cheek, then wraps her little arms around his neck. “Dadda.”

He holds her close to him, his eyes fluttering shut as he breathes in the scent of baby powder and no-tears shampoo. Then he opens them and gives Darcy a gentle, heartfelt smile. “Thank you,” he says, “for taking care of her for me.”

“Anytime,” Darcy says. She pauses, because it sounded a little flippant, and lays her hand on his arm. “I mean that. I will always be here for her, and for you, if you need me.”

He nods, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of his baby's head. “Thank you,” he says again. And Darcy smiles.


	10. Face of an Angel (Love of a Witch)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Citymusings, who wanted to see Natasha setting Bucky up with girls, Cap 2 style.

“You know Pepper's assistant, Jessica? She and her boyfriend recently broke up.”

Bucky, who is concentrating on the rifle in his hand, grunts to indicate that he has, at some level, acknowledged that Natasha is speaking.

“She likes kids,” Natasha adds, in a tone that would probably sound enticing to someone somewhere. “But she doesn't have any of her own.”

Bucky takes a shot. He frowns. It's almost an inch off. The scope must be calibrated wrong. He grunts at Natasha again, digging a tiny screwdriver out of the pile of tools on his table and poking at the scope.

Natasha leans back against the wall. “What about Reagan in Accounting?”

He glances up at her briefly. “The one with the blue stripes in her hair?”

“Yeah. She's cute, and single.”

“She has blue stripes in her hair. She looks like a pillowcase.”

Natasha scoffs as he goes back to his work. He adjusts the scope, tightens it down, and takes another shot. He frowns again. Still off, but now by only half an inch. Maybe there is a burr in the barrel? He starts the process of disassembling the rifle.

“Well, what about Jenny Coleridge? Redheaded Jenny from PR, who works with - ”

“How about we not do this, huh?” Bucky growls. “Look, Nat, I know what you're tryin' to do, and I appreciate the effort, but you can stop now. Okay?”

Natasha blinks at him. “James, as long as I've known you, you've been a healthy, red-blooded, straight man with a straight man's drive and a straight man's desires and needs. Are you telling me that you've decided to become a monk now or something?”

Bucky scoffs, tweaking a component inside the barrel before beginning the reassembly process. “Hell no, I ain't,” he replies. “I just ain't worried about all that right now.” He sights, shoots. Shoots again. Changes out the target and shoots again. Now it is true. With a nod of satisfaction, he cleans up his tools and the mess before returning to the rifle to really practice with it.

But Natasha isn't done. “What, then?” she asks. And then she blinks. “James, are you seeing someone already?”

He smirks. “As a matter of fact, I _do_ have a girl.”

She stares at him. “Bullshit. Who? Not Darcy – she was out last weekend with some random from a club.”

“Nah, not her. I ain't her type,” he chuckles. “Too settled. She ain't done playing yet. Maybe in a coupla years, though. Let her get it out of her system.”

“Who, then?” Natasha demands.

Bucky smirks. “You've met her,” he says. “Cute little thing, dark hair and eyes, little button nose, trouble controlling her bladder.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “James,” she begins, but he cuts her off.

“No, Nat,” he says. He turns to face her, and his voice is firm in a way that it very seldom is. “I'm gonna say this once and I ain't gonna say it again. Steve puts up with you doin' this because Steve goes along to get along, but I ain't Steve and you damn well know it. I'm tellin' you right now I got all the dame I need sleepin' in a crib up there in my apartment. Me and her, we got each other and right now, that's all we need. Maybe she might need a mama eventually, but then again, between you and Darcy and Pepper and Jane, maybe she won't, either. Either way, I ain't lookin' right now, so you can save your effort and your breath. Stop. Got it?”

She studies his face for a long moment before nodding. “All right,” she says. “I'll stop. For now.”

He rolls his eyes. “You let me worry about me; you worry about you. Ain't you got enough to take care of with that circus archer? You gotta go lookin' for trouble now?”

Natasha scoffs. “Clint's no trouble.”

Bucky chuckles. “If you really think that, you ain't payin' close enough attention.” He turns back to his paper target, lifting the rifle to his shoulder.

Natasha narrows her eyes at him, but says nothing. When he begins shooting again, she leaves the room. He smirks to himself. That ought to keep her busy and out of his (and hopefully Steve's) hair for awhile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still taking non-shippy prompts; leave 'em in the comments if you got 'em. :)


	11. A Journey Not a Destination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO CHAPTERS IN TWO DAYS OF PURE FLUFF HOW MUCH DO YOU ALL LOVE ME HUH?!
> 
> ;)
> 
> This chapter was prompted by Fiora, who wanted to see Tony babysitting toddler!Steffie with no backup. I cheated a little bit, but I think you'll like it. :)

Tony Stark is good in a crisis. When there are aliens, when there are Doombots, when people are in trouble, Tony Stark is a good person to call; he will don his suit and fly out to save the day, and he will do so with a snarky quip worthy of Deadpool himself. Sometimes he will do so with a snarky quip _aimed at_ Deadpool himself. (Those days are usually a lot of fun.)

Tony Stark is not good at people-crises. When there is a breakup, when there are tears, when there is trauma, Tony Stark is not a good person to call, because Tony Stark was poorly socialized as a puppy and he does not people well.

Unfortunately, on a certain Thursday when Steffie is not quite two, JARVIS cuts off the music in his workshop and says, “Sir, Miss Lewis and young Miss Barnes are on the way down. It is rather important.”

Tony cuts off the blowtorch and pushes his goggles up onto his head just as the lab door slides open. Darcy is carrying Steffie on her hip, the diaper backpack on her back, and her eyes are red and her face blotchy. “Tony,” she says, “I need you to take her.”

“Whoa, wait, what?”

Darcy is pushing the baby into his arms and he is so surprised that he doesn't even resist; he just takes her, submitting to having his beard pulled with just a slight wince. Darcy shrugs the backpack off and leaves it on the floor beside the workbench. “You have to take her. She's had a cold, so she can't go to day care, and I've got to catch a plane in less than two hours.”

“What? Where are you going?” He reaches out, gripping her arm. “Lewis, what the hell? Explain!”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “It's my brother, Alan,” she says. “He's been in an accident. They're not sure if he's going to make it. I have to go home.”

“And you're, what, flying commercial? Hell no. JARVIS, call my pilot. Arrange the flight. Where do you need to fly to?”

“Mobile,” Darcy says. “Mobile Regional Airport.”

Tony nods. “JARVIS.”

“I am calling now, Sir,” JARVIS replies. “One moment.” There is a brief pause, during which Darcy sniffles and Steffie reaches for at least three things on the workbench that she could use to badly hurt herself. Then JARVIS says, “The arrangements are made. Miss Lewis, the pilot will meet you at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, and a helicopter will take you both to Newark Liberty International; the Stark Industries jet will be ready by the time you arrive, and a flight plan is already being filed to the Mobile Regional Airport. Would you like me to have a car rental arranged, or will someone pick you up?”

“A rental. Oh, God, JARVIS, you're a life saver.”

“Hey!” Tony protests.

Darcy laughs wetly, tiptoeing to kiss Tony on the cheek. “You, too, Tony. Thank you.”

“The rental is arranged, Miss Lewis; it will be waiting for you at the Avis desk inside the terminal.”

“Thank you so much, JARVIS.”

“You're most welcome, Miss Lewis. When you are ready to return, please contact me directly and I will make the arrangements.”

“I will.” Darcy squeezes Tony's shoulder in gratitude, then tiptoes again to kiss Steffie's rosy cheek. “Be good for Uncle Tony!” she says, and then she's gone.

The workshop is very quiet for a moment. Tony and Steffie study one another carefully. It is, by far, not the first time he's held her or cared for her, but it _is_ the first time he's had to manage her completely by himself. He has never considered himself good with kids.

The first ten minutes or so consist of a great deal of scientific experimentation - by which, of course, Tony means trial and error. He deduces without needing to be told that putting Steffie on the floor would be a Very Bad Idea. But there aren't a whole lot of other places where he can put her.

He fishes the carrier out of the bag, wriggles her into it, and puts her on his back. That's great, but the shoulder straps restrict his arm movement and he can't exactly weld with a baby on his back. He grumbles, pondering.

And then Steffie gives a squeal. “Unka Nono!” she exclaims, and starts to babble, excited nonsense sounds punctuated with tugs on his hair.

Tony turns, and finds himself face-to-claw with a very curious robot. And he has an Idea.

“Steffie,” he says, “this is DUM-E. Can you say DUM-E?”

“Um!” Steffie announces.

“Close enough!” Tony replies, grinning wildly. “DUM-E, get your claw over here.” He backs up to a table and rests Steffie on it, shrugging out of the carrier. When DUM-E comes over, Tony hoists the carrier up onto his arm. “Hold this,” he says. “Do not drop it. Do not allow it to get close to the tables. In fact, bring it over here.” He paces across the workshop to a wide, open space. “Stand right here, and hold that, and do not move until I tell you to. Do you unders - are you even listening to me? DUM-E!”

DUM-E jerks slightly and motors over to where Tony is standing. Tony says, “Stay!”

DUM-E's gears whir in acknowledgement. Tony, grinning, taps Steffie on the nose. “Excellent,” he says. “I'm a genius.” And then he goes back to work.

Four hours later, when the workshop door slides open again, Tony raises his head and blinks at the sight of Bucky Barnes standing in his doorway. “Barnes.”

“Stark,” Bucky replies. “Darcy said she'd left Steffie with you.”

Tony has to actually think about it for a minute, and then he jerks his head up, turning to look in the direction of where he left the baby, hanging on DUM-E's arm. “Oh,” he says. He wonders how bad this is going to be.

Turns out, it isn't terrible. Steffie needs a change and something to eat, but JARVIS has taken advantage of Tony's distraction. She's still hanging from DUM-E's arm - making it fairly obvious what Tony did, and he definitely gets the stink-eye from Bucky for it - but at the moment that the two men walk around the equipment to reach her, she is manipulating holographic pieces to put together a jigsaw puzzle. Every time she gets a connection right, it explodes in a brilliant light show that makes her squeal and kick and clap her hands. 

Bucky crosses the room and relieves DUM-E of his burden. “Dadda!” Steffie exclaims. “Dadda!” She begins to babble, clearly telling him all about her exciting day. 

He laughs softly. “Did you tell JARVIS and DUM-E thank you for babysitting you?” he asks.

“Ank!” Steffie parrots.

DUM-E whirs his gears. JARVIS says, “You are most welcome, Miss Barnes.”

Tony gets a whack to the back of the head as Bucky passes him on the way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you ask (and before I forget) - _Darcy's brother will make a full recovery._


	12. So Let's Make a New Beginning (Have Some Fun)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a double prompt fill: CupKatyCakes asked for Darcy making a scrapbook of Steffie's milestones like her mom did for her; Nishah wanted to see Darcy recognizing that memories and history are important, reminding Bucky that he has to go through the old tapes and photos and talk to people who knew them so he knows who her biological parents were and what they were like when Steffie asks. 
> 
> And also, shipping starts now.

Darcy Lewis is not a snoop. She does not poke and pry, she does not dig for secrets. Darcy's mother was a busy woman, raising six kids by herself after her husband died, but one of the things she never failed to do was drill manners into her children, and snooping is just rude. Darcy Lewis is not a snoop.

However, she does sometimes get bored. And when she's bored, sometimes she cleans. Which is how she found the boxes.

The team is on the other side of the globe, handling a situation, and Darcy is staying with Steffie. The baby is down for a nap, though, and there's nothing good on television, so Darcy decides to make herself useful. She starts in the kitchen, scrubbing everything down until it shines, and then she does both the bathrooms. She cleans the living room, even washing the windows, and puts out the souped-up Stark version of a Roomba that does an excellent job on the floors but can't be trusted around a small child.

She gathers up the laundry and puts it in to wash, thinks about stripping Bucky's bed, and decides to wait for that until Steffie wakes up. She cleans up the room that will be Steffie's bedroom once she's old enough, putting away all the toys and tidying the cupboards.

That done, she pushes open the door to the third bedroom, which she's never been inside before. She flips the light switch and blinks at the sight before her. The room is nearly empty; its only contents are four medium-sized cardboard boxes, neatly stacked against the wall. All of them are labeled “Stephanie - Family.”

Darcy is not a snoop, but she can't help herself. She opens the loose top of the first box, dropping to one knee to peer inside, and she blinks in surprise at what she sees. She rummages a little bit, getting her bearings, and then she turns, peeking into the other boxes as well.

By the time she's finished rummaging, she feels an odd kinship with Jessica Cleve. History is important to Darcy, family ties and knowing where you came from; Jessica clearly felt the same way, because one of those boxes is full to bursting with photographs and family pictures, every single one of them neatly labeled with names and dates. In another box, Darcy discovers important papers like Steffie's original birth certificate - the one that named her Jean Anne Cleve - as well as a family tree that goes back to the seventeenth century. There are both Wade and Jessica's school records and yearbooks - they were high school sweethearts who went to Prom together - and their wedding pictures, and a series of pictures of Jessica in the front yard of the little house in Iowa, turned sideways to the camera to show off her growing belly. All of Steffie's history is here in these boxes.

Darcy sits back on her haunches, tapping a finger against her chin, and she thinks for a minute. Then she starts to smile.

When Steffie wakes up, Darcy changes her into a corduroy jumper and straps her into the backpack carrier, grabs the diaper bag, and heads down into the bowels of the building, crossing under the street and into Grand Central. She catches the train across town, heading to a little shop that she found on the Internet, and spends an obscene amount of money on ridiculously overpriced supplies. Then she heads back to the tower with her purchases and the beginnings of a plan.

With JARVIS's assistance, Darcy locates a folding table and an unused, comfortable desk chair; JARVIS summons one of the building porters to carry them upstairs for her. The porter helps her set them up in Bucky's disused third bedroom, and Darcy brings Steffie's play mat and a few toys into the room to keep her occupied. Then she goes to work. Her project keeps her occupied for the rest of the weekend, cutting and pasting and sorting and labeling and applying stickers and glitter and occasionally pausing to sniffle and wipe her eyes.

JARVIS is more help than Darcy could have anticipated; his security cameras are top-notch, so the still shots he has of Bucky putting together Steffie's crib, holding her while she cries, even changing her diaper and giving her a bath, are nearly studio quality. He has these printed on the eighteenth floor and delivered to her by one of the kids from the mailroom. Along with them, he sends photos of Steffie with Nat, with Darcy, with Pepper and Tony, with Steve, even with Bruce (who looks fantastically nervous holding her for the first time.) Darcy uses every single one of them, not wanting to miss any of the important moments.

By the time she finishes, she has two scrapbooks, both of which are nearly two inches thick. She's barely scratched the surface of the history in those boxes, but it will do for a Cliff's Notes version, so she tucks away everything she didn't use, closing the boxes up tight. She cleans up her mess, and she asks JARVIS to send one of the porters to retrieve the table and chair again. She puts the scrapbooking supplies on the shelf in the disused room's closet - they'll be needed again before long - and she clears herself and Steffie out of the room, turning out the light and shutting the door behind her.

It is late on Monday when the team returns, battered and exhausted but successful. Steffie is already in bed, asleep, when Bucky gets home; he stands over her crib for a few minutes, his fingers stroking her fine hair and resting on her little back before he tears himself away and goes in to take a shower. When he comes out, Darcy is still sitting on the sofa in the living room, and she has the scrapbooks on the coffee table. He flops down onto the sofa beside her. “What's this?”

She picks up the first one. “I want to state, for the record, that I was not snooping,” she says.

He chuckles. “Okay.”

“I made these for Steffie,” she says. She explains about cleaning and finding the boxes, and she hands him the first of the two books. It is the one that focuses on Wade and Jessica and their family, including the family tree and Steffie's original birth certificate.

He flips through it fairly rapidly, his eyes taking everything in with a clinical amount of interest. “She'll appreciate this,” he says softly when he gets to the end. “And she'll appreciate that you took the time. I... I knew it was important, you know? 'S why I saved everything. Kept meaning to do something with it, at least organize it, but I never got around to it. Everything else was more important.”

She grins. “Well, you've been a little busy raising her, I'm sure she'll forgive you for not alphabetizing her family photos.”

He laughs. “So what's the other one?”

She swaps books with him, setting the first one down and handing him the second. When he flips it open, he is confronted with a picture of himself holding her in his arms, standing in Tony's workshop. She is wrapped in a yellow blanket he recognizes as the one he brought her home in, and he says, “Holy shit, Darce, is this...?”

“The day you brought her home? Yeah. I asked JARVIS to help me with milestones. So this is you bringing her home for the first time.”

He studies the picture for a long time, taking in the expression on Tony's face as he stares down at the bundle in Bucky's arms. He clearly thought Bucky was insane for wanting to take on a child like that, but it hadn't stopped him from helping. He turns the page and laughs at a set of pictures: himself changing Steffie's diaper, feeding her, holding her at arm's length with spit-up down the front of his shirt. He turns these pages much more slowly, remembering each event as he comes across it.

Here is Steffie sitting up by herself for the first time; here is Steffie holding her own bottle; here is Steffie learning to Army-crawl across the floor. Here is Steffie learning to crawl properly, pulling herself up on Bucky's metal arm, taking her first step. Interspersed with photos of himself and Steffie are photos of everyone else with her: Natasha playing pat-a-cake with her, Steve standing with her at the window and pointing out different parts of Manhattan, Darcy feeding her dinner. Every photo is surrounded by fancy borders and embellished with stickers or glitter and generally dressed up fancy. The book is clearly a labor of love, and Bucky is finding it hard to breathe.

Then he turns the page to find a close up shot of his face the first time she called him Dadda - here is where he has to stop and wipe at his face because there are tears running down his cheeks. He makes it through the rest of the book with occasional swipes at his face, and when he finishes, he sets it carefully on the table and turns to her, pulling her into a hug. “Thank you,” he murmurs into her hair. “It's amazing. _You're_ amazing.”

She hugs him back tightly. “You're welcome,” she replies, her voice gentle. “You're worth it. Both of you.” When his arms loosen, she sits back just a bit, studying his face. Her eyes flick back and forth between his, as though she's searching for something. Just when he's about to ask her what it is she's searching for, she leans forward again - not for a hug this time. Her lips press, warm and sweet, against his, while her fingers scratch against the stubble on his jaw.

He kisses her back, even though he knows he probably shouldn't. Darcy is young - despite her chronological age, she's very young still, and has a lot of growing to do before she's ready to settle down. She isn't ready for him. But he thinks she will be someday, and this will tide him over until then. When they separate, he opens his eyes and looks into hers, and he is surprised by what he sees on her face. She gives him a deeply self-satisfied smirk and says, “Can we stop dancing around this now?”

He blinks at her. “Huh?”

She pats his cheek. “Silly boy,” she says softly. “I know what you're thinking. I can see it on your face when you look at me. You think I'm not ready for you.”

He shakes his head, clearing his throat. “Darce,” he begins, but she presses a finger against his lips.

“Someday,” she says, “they will invent a man who doesn't think he knows what a girl needs before asking her what it is that she wants.” She waits for that to sink in, then leans up to kiss him again.

He pulls back, catching her cheek with his right hand. “Darcy,” he says, low and serious, “I'm not one of your club boys. I don't do one night stands, not any more. I got Steffie to think about.”

“You think I don't already know that?” she replies, a little sharply. “I'll remind you who was here all weekend while you were off playing superhero.” She tugs gently on his ear. “If all I was interested in was a one night stand, Bucky, I'd be out at a club.”

He swallows hard, taking his turn to search her face. “You're sure?” he says finally. “I come with a lot of baggage, Darce. And I ain't talkin' about just Steffie, either.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sweetheart,” she drawls, “you are practically an eight-pieced matched luggage set. Steffie, the Russians, HYDRA, your very poorly-hidden unrequited hard-on for Steve that you think nobody knows about.  _I know_ you have baggage. I do, too. Some of it matches some of yours, and maybe we'll talk about that one day soon. All of that doesn't matter. Do you want me? Do you want to try this with me?”

His head is reeling at the idea that she knows all of this about him and somehow apparently wants him anyway, and all he can manage to do is nod. She smirks. “Good,” she says. “Then let's give it a shot, and see what happens. Sound good to you?”

He slides his hands up her back and into her hair. “Sounds great to me,” he replies, drawing her down to kiss him again. 

A week or so later, Steffie begins sleeping in her own bedroom.


	13. Walk Behind While You Would Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Sanhaim, who asked for Nick Fury doting on Steffie and spoiling her rotten. It's ... close? :)

Bucky doesn't like bringing Steffie in to SHIELD headquarters. With good reason, he thinks, he doesn't really want her around the kind of stuff that goes down there. There are, on occasion, dangerous individuals present in SHIELD's New York offices, and besides that, it's an office. There's no day care center on site like there is at Stark Tower, and it's just not a place for children.

But on a particular day, about three weeks after Steffie turns two, he happens to be out with her when he gets a call. He's needed at headquarters to clarify some matters related to his last mission, and it'll only take about half an hour, so would he please come by as soon as possible and no this isn't really a request.

So he sighs and he retrieves her from the sandbox (cleaning her off as best he can in the process, but she's still a little gritty when he's done) and he says, “Daddy's got to go by the office; think you can be a good girl there for a little while?”

“No,” she replies easily.

“Well,” he says, “at least you're honest about it.”

Steffie is, for the most part, a good kid. She's incredibly bright, and she has an extensive vocabulary in both English and Russian. She knows her numbers (up to six), her letters (up to P) and her Cyrillic characters (up to  Ж) . She can eat with a spoon and run without falling, and she bounces off walls like a champ. She loves stories about superheroes and Little Red Riding Hood and Baba Yaga. She gets into the usual amount of trouble for a two-year-old; it tends to involve mildly defiant behavior and swearing in Russian. 

Bucky worries about her getting spoiled; she _is_ objectively adorable, and with the number of doting uncles in her life, especially rich idiots with no kids of their own _Tony_ , she has more toys and games and books than any one child could possibly need. But she's mostly a good kid.

But there's something about taking her to places that aren't toddler-friendly. It's like she just _knows_ that she doesn't belong there. On the playground, or at daycare, she's one of the most well-mannered children in existence. But every single time in her life that he's brought her into a remotely office-like place, she's taken the situation as a challenge to melt down in the most public and voluble of ways she could possibly manage.

He tries not to think about that time at the bank.

So he braces himself when they walk through the glass doors at SHIELD. She has insisted upon walking, so she's wearing her harness - it's a bright blue and green backpack in the shape of an elephant, with straps that clip in the front of her chest so that she can't take it off. There's a tether attached to the center of the elephant's body, so that it's kind of like having her on a leash. He usually gets the stink-eye from at least a few people when he uses it, but he doesn't really give a rat's ass what anyone else thinks.

The first person they run into is Agent McBryde, who ran the op that led to Steffie becoming Bucky's baby. She's been out of the country - Bucky heard she was assigned to a post in England, which was quite a step up for her - and this is the first time she's seen Steffie since that day. She stops in her tracks and stares. “No,” she says. “Surely not.”

Bucky grins. “Oh, yeah,” he says. 

McBryde crouches down and gets on Steffie's level. “Hi there,” she says.

Steffie pulls up short and stares suspiciously at McBryde. Bucky nudges the back of her head with his right hand. “Say hello to Agent McBryde,” he says.

Steffie sighs - actually  _sighs_ like it's an imposition. “Hi.”

McBryde grins. “What's your name?” she asks.

Steffie narrows her eyes at McBryde, then looks up at Bucky as if asking for confirmation that she is, in fact, required to participate in this conversation. Bucky nods at her and she sighs again. “Steffie,” she says.

“Well hi, Steffie, I'm Karen. It's nice to meet you.”

Steffie doesn't have much to say to that, and Karen chuckles as she stands up. “She's absolutely adorable,” she tells Bucky. Then she shakes her head. “I have to tell you, Barnes, I thought you were crazy for taking her on.”

“I probably was,” Bucky agrees cheerfully. “But we're doing all right.”

“Looks like it.” She claps him on the shoulder and then says, “Bye, Steffie!”

Steffie does not respond; instead, she glares at McBryde as though she were Doctor Doom himself. McBryde laughs some more and heads off down a corridor. Bucky shakes his head at his daughter. “You could be a little more friendly,” he says.

“No,” Steffie replies.

“Or don't,” he agrees. “Come on, kiddo. Sooner we get down to Hill's office, the sooner we can get outta here.”

“I don't want to,” Steffie announced.

He chuckles. “I don't, either,” he says. “But that's life.”

They make their way through the building to Hill's office, stopping a few times so that Steffie can be admired by some agent or another who knows Bucky. By the time they get there, Bucky is seriously considering conditioning the kid to only speak in Russian when they're in public, just so people can say something about her besides talk about how pretty she is. Sure, she's pretty, but that's not all there is to her, even at two!

He huffs softly at himself, indignant, and pushes open the door to Hill's office. She looks up at him. “You're late.” Her eyes fall to Steffie. “And you brought your child.”

“I'm off-duty today,” he snaps in response. “I can go.”

“I want a Popsicle,” Steffie interjects.

He gently maneuvers Steffie into a corner of the room and sets her down, opening the backpack and pulling out her Bucky Bear and a couple of other toys. “Sit here,” he murmurs in Russian. “Play quietly. When I'm done, we'll go have a Popsicle.”

“No,” Steffie agrees cordially, immediately engrossed in her toys.

“She's fond of no, isn't she?” Hill comments.

“She hears it a lot,” Bucky replies. “Especially when she's around Stark. Now what's so goddamn important that I had to cut our day at the park short?”

Hill pulls out a file, and they begin going over some of the information from the briefing in question, ignoring the sound of Steffie playing contentedly behind them. Halfway through, a kid from the mailroom drops by with a thick file that's just come down from Washington.

A minute or so after the kid dropped off the file, the back of Bucky's brain sends up a warning signal. Something is wrong, it says. Something is very, very wrong. He furrows his brow, trying to decide what it is while still paying attention to Hill. After another minute or so, he raises his head. He looks around, trying to place what the problem is. He doesn't hear anything out of the ordinary, so -

He doesn't _hear_ anything.

His head jerks around and his eyes fall on the corner where Steffie was playing. Her Iron Man and Hulk action figures are still there, but her Bucky Bear is gone, and so is she. Hill falls silent, her eyes going wide as she realizes what he has realized.

He jerks his head around the other direction. The door is open. Not wide, but apparently the kid from the mailroom didn't close it all the way when he left. It is now open just enough to allow egress to a two year old and her stuffed bear. He swears furiously in five different languages, lunging for the door and out into the hallway. 

It is empty. There is no sign of her. 

Hill immediately gets on the building-wide intercom. “Code Ten, lockdown!” she announces. “This is not a drill. All agents, Code Ten, lockdown. There is a missing child in the building, age two, brown hair, brown eyes, wearing a purple Hawkeye shirt, yellow shorts, and an elephant backpack.”

The response is immediate; a Code Ten indicates that everyone in the building should immediately stop whatever they're doing and respond; within minutes, agents are searching the floors in a grid pattern, looking for Steffie. At this point, she could be anywhere; Bucky himself takes the nearest stairwell, flinging himself down to the ground level first, and then taking the steps two and three at a time on the way back up.

He's just hit the ninth floor landing when he hears over the intercom: _“Cancel Code Ten, Cancel Code Ten. Lockdown lifted. Agent Barnes, please report to Director Fury's office.”_

His heart in his throat, Bucky blasts up one more flight and through the door, nearly bowling over two agents from the Science division as he races up the hall to the Director's office. He bursts through the door - and there is Steffie, safe and sound in Nick Fury's arms. They are standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the city, and in her hands is a cherry Popsicle. The Director himself is holding a grape one.

Bucky nearly falls to his knees at the sight. He swears softly in Turkish and can't even bring himself to care when Steffie's head whips around, her eyes wide, and she repeats the fairly filthy words with a perfect accent.

Fury laughs. “They're better than a voice recorder at this age,” he comments. She begins wiggling in his arms, and he puts her down.

She toddles over to Bucky and holds up her Popsicle. “Look, Dadda,” she says, clearly proud of herself.

“You got a Popsicle,” he says, struggling to keep his voice calm. “I see that.”

“If you want me to turn my back while you strangle her,” Fury offers, “I didn't see a damn thing.”

Bucky laughs, and the tension in his chest breaks. “Jesus,” he whispers, reaching out and wrapping his metal arm around her, pulling her to him. “When I realized she was gone...” He closes his eyes, trying to make the world stop spinning.

“I thought she might be yours, but I wasn't sure,” Fury says. “Hadn't seen her since before she started walking. I was actually on the way up here with her when I heard the Code Ten.”

Bucky nods. “Thank you,” he says simply.

Fury replies, “Don't mention it. And get her out of here; this is no place for a kid.”

“Yeah, well, she wouldn't have had to be here if Sitwell would listen when I debriefed,” Bucky replies. He stands, bringing Steffie with him and settling her on his hip. “Come on, kiddo. Let's get out of here.”

“No,” Steffie says, contentedly dripping her Popsicle all down the front of her shirt and his.


	14. A Wonder to Behold It Was (With Many Colors Bright)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was prompted by Citymusings, who suggested the idea of vintage toys. She was thinking Lincoln Logs or TinkerToys. I tend to go off in wild tangent-y directions.

When he sees it in the window of the tiny Brooklyn shop, he has to stop and do a double take. It's absolutely gorgeous, just like he remembers. It's sleek and shiny, cherry red, without even a hint of rust or damage. The chrome is brilliantly silver and the whitewall tires shine; the ladders on the sides are just as yellow as he could possibly ask for. The lettering, which reads V.F.D. No. 1, is perfectly gold with a flawless black outline.

Of course it's for Steffie. Why on earth would he buy such a thing for himself?

He walks into the antique shop and sizes up the woman behind the counter. He puts her at about seventy or so years old, no nonsense, and probably a sharp hand at bargaining. She sizes him up in return, but gives no indication of what she might think of him. He says, “That fire engine in the window, is it vintage?”

“1923,” the woman replies.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “only it looks brand new.”

“Well,” the woman admits, “my husband restored it.”

“Hmm.” Bucky rubs his chin for a moment. “So I guess it's pretty pricey, huh?”

Her eyes narrow and start to gleam. “Well,” she says, “ordinarily I'd say it isn't for sale, because restoring it actually reduces the value. We keep it in the window for a show piece.”

“Yeah, I bet you do,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. He bites back a grin; he's dealt with shop owners like her many a time. Back in his day, it was a point of pride to come away with what you wanted in a situation like this. He thinks about it for a minute, contemplating the best angle of attack. “Yeah, I had one just like that when I was a kid,” he says.

“Did you?” the woman says, looking him up and down, a bit askance. “Seems to me they stopped making that particular model in the early fifties.”

“Probably they did,” he drawls, all Brooklyn now. “I got mine for Christmas the year I was five, so reckon that woulda been 1923. My Ma got it down at F.A.O. Schwarz; I think she paid seven dollars for it. 'Course, that was a lot of money back then.” He grins. “Can't imagine how she got it home on the train, but she managed it.”

The woman scoffs. “You're twenty-five if you're a day,” she asserted.

He grins. “Thirty-two,” he replies, “give or take.” He reaches out and offers his hand. “Bucky Barnes. Pleased to meet ya.”

She stares at him in shock even as she shakes his hand automatically. “Veronica Welty,” she says. “Really? _The_ Bucky Barnes?”

“Only one I know of, ma'am,” he replies, tipping her a wink. He leans against the counter. “So here's the thing,” he says. “I got me a little girl, you know? She's just now two. And I saw that pedal car in the window and I thought, you know, my little girl would absolutely love that thing. Probably terrorize everybody in the building with it. And what with it bein' just exactly like the one I had when I was little, you know? It'd be just perfect. So, what do you say? I'll give you a hundred bucks for it.”

She sputtered just a bit, as he'd expected; it was a low-ball figure, even for a restored model. “Really,” she finally managed. “Honestly, though, Mr. Barnes, it isn't for sale.”

“Bucky,” he corrects her gently. “Two-fifty.”

“My husband will have very harsh words for me if I sell that,” she tries, but he grins. She's gone from not-for-sale to shouldn't-sell. It's only a step or two farther.

“You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Welty,” he says, trying his best to look skint. “But I mean to have that pedal car. Five hundred.”

Her lips press together in a thin line. She glares at him for a long moment. And then she says, “And will you autograph a picture for him?”

He laughs. “If I walk out of here today with that pedal car, Mrs. Welty, I'll sign just about any damn thing you want me to sign. In fact, hang on.” He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials a number. “Hey, Stevie, where you at?”

“ _This chocolate shop is amazing,”_ Steve replies. _“They have chocolate with nuts and raisins in it, I swear to you, Bucky, I could eat my weight.”_

Bucky grins. “I need a favor. I'm three doors up in the antique shop, would you come up here for a second?”

“ _Sure; I'm on my way. Should I bring Steffie, or...?”_

“Nah, leave her with Jane and Darcy. She'd just end up breakin' something in here.” He hangs up and says, “Mrs. Welty, show me what you got that needs signed.”

She ducks into the back of the shop for a moment, just as Steve enters. Bucky points out the pedal car in the window, and Steve says, “Yeah, I remember that. We used to play on it.”

Bucky grins. “My Ma's rollin' over in her grave for what I'm about to pay for that thing.”

“So what am I doing here?” Steve asks.

“Sweetening the pot,” Bucky replies.

A moment later, Mrs. Welty returns, carrying a shadow box. She blinks up at Steve. “Oh, my.”

Steve gives her his patented aw-shucks grin. “Ma'am.”

“She's got somethin' she needs signed, Stevie,” Bucky says. “I figured I'd give her a two for one, since she's partin' with her show piece and Mr. Welty's probably gonna be mighty sore at her.” He cocks an eyebrow at her. “Deal?”

She nods. “Deal.”

Mrs. Welty opens the shadow box and pulls out a photograph. It is a picture of a young girl in her Sunday best, gloves and all, beaming proudly with the arm of Captain America draped around her shoulders. “Oh, look at that,” Steve murmurs. “Is that you?” She nods, and he grins, running a finger over the picture's surface. “This was in Nashville. I remember, because – well, you don't care about that.” He grins at her. “Have you got a marker?”

She does in fact have a silver Sharpie; she hands it to him, stars in her eyes, and he signs the picture with a flourish. Then she pulls something else out of the shadow box: a single, vintage Captain America trading card. It's from the one set that was printed after Steve rescued Bucky; there were photographs of all the Commandos in that set. This particular card bears a picture of both Steve and Bucky.

Bucky cocks an eyebrow at her. “Sure you want me writin' all over this?”

She nods breathlessly, and Bucky chuckles and signs the card near the bottom. Steve takes the marker back from him and signs it as well, near the middle so that their faces are still uncovered. He caps the marker and hands it back to Mrs. Welty. Then Bucky pulls out his wallet. “You take cards, or do I need to go to the ATM?”

He makes a quick trip to the ATM.

By the time he returns, Steve has the little pedal car out of the window and on the floor, and he's crouched down, working the pedals with his hands to make sure the car works properly. It does. He cons Mrs. Welty out of a ball of twine that was laying on the counter, and he uses it to tie a makeshift pull while Bucky hands over the five hundred dollars; with a last set of Brooklyn grins, they leave the shop, Steve tugging the little car behind him like a wagon.

Steffie, upon seeing the car, falls madly in love and demands that she be allowed to ride in it for the rest of the afternoon, and she makes siren noises at the top of her lungs as Steve and Bucky take it in turns to pull her up the sidewalk.

Bucky reckons it's the best five hundred bucks he's ever spent.


	15. Me and Her or You and Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MORE SHIPPING! Remember that other thing I foreshadowed a few chapters ago? IT HAS ARRIVED. YAY SHIPPING!

"We need to talk."

Never were four words better designed to strike fear into the heart of a man, but Bucky Barnes is pretty secure in his relationship with his girlfriend, so he doesn't immediately start wondering what it is that he might have done wrong or whether he has missed some important date. Instead, he mutes the ball game on the television and says, "Sure, Doll. 'Bout what?"

"Steve." Darcy drops neatly onto the sofa beside him, studying him closely.

He raises an eyebrow at her. "What about Steve?"

"Remember how we talked when we got together about baggage, and you were worried that yours might scare me away? And I mentioned your ill-hidden but long-lived... how should I put this? _Affection_."

Bucky snorts. "I think the term you used was _poorly-hidden unrequited hard-on_."

She rolls her eyes. "I was trying to be genteel about it."

"Why start now?" he asks reasonably.

"Point." She scoots closer to him. "Are you ready to do anything about it?"

He blinks at her in surprise. "Are you leaving for some reason?"

"No," she drawls. "I'm not going anywhere. My being here or not being here is entirely unrelated to the question at hand."

He considers her carefully, fairly sure he is not following the course of the conversation properly and thus tamping down the urge to overreact. "So you're asking me what, exactly? If I'm plannin' on runnin' around behind your back with my best friend?"

She sighs. "You know I love you, Bucky, but sometimes you are very, very thick."

"Thank you," he replies. They grin at each other.

She rewards him for his humor with a quick kiss on the lips. "You remember how I told you that some of my baggage might match some of yours?"

He opens his mouth to reply, then stops and stares at her. "What, you've got a thing for Steve, too?"

Darcy shrugs. "Sure," she says easily. "I kind of thought you knew that."

"No, I..." He stops, running a hand through his hair. Then he stands up, beginning to pace the way he always does when he's agitated. "I wouldn't have - if I'd known - I mean - "

"Bucky," Darcy says, stepping in front of him to stop his movements. "Calm down. Listen to what I'm saying to you. You have a thing for Steve. I have a thing for Steve. What I'm asking you is if you're ready to do something about our mutual thing for Steve."

He reaches up to touch her face gently, his right hand cupping her cheek. "Darcy," he says, then stops. He takes a breath as if to speak, and his face goes through a remarkable range of contortions before he finally says, "I'm confused."

She raises an eyebrow. "Okay. What about?"

"I thought we were doin' okay."

"We _are_ doing okay. I wouldn't have agreed to move in with you if we weren't."

"Okay, but why... I mean... if we're doin' good, me and you, why do you think I would...? Or why would you...? I... I don't understand."

Darcy sighs. "Let's back this whole conversation train up." She takes his hand and tugs him back to the couch, sitting him down before plopping herself down in his lap. "Before we talk about this, I want you to understand that we - you and me, and our relationship - we're fine. We're solid. Okay? I love you, and you love me, and I love Steffie, and I'm not going anywhere and neither are you. Okay?"

"Okay," he said.

"Now, with that understood," Darcy continues, "I have a thing for Steve. You have a thing for Steve. And there's no reason why we can't have a thing for Steve together."

"Together  _how_ ?" he asks. "Because like you said, I love you, but if you're askin' me to dress up like him or somethin', that's just..."

"Oh,  _God,_ no." Darcy fights back laughter. "Not at all." She shifts, straddling his lap so that she's facing him, her backside resting on his knees. "I am suggesting, sugarplum, that we could  _include_ him in what we have. If he's willing, of course."

He blinks. "What, like a three-way?"

Darcy sighed, rolling her eyes. "Finally, he gets it! Yes, like a three-way. Only long-term."

Bucky looks skeptical. "Have you talked to him about this? Because I don't think he's gonna go for it."

"Of course not," Darcy replies. "I figured you and I should talk about it first, since we're the ones actually _in_ a relationship, and then if we decide it's something we want to do, we go to him and talk to him about it and see how he feels."

Bucky considers this for a long moment before speaking again. "Why now?" he asks.

Darcy takes a deep breath. "Because Sharon's going to be transferred here soon."

Bucky's teeth grind together. "Oh," he says simply.

Darcy nods, leaning forward a bit to relax against him. His arms go around her automatically and he holds her close, their breathing slowly falling into sync. She doesn't say anything at all, just lets him think about what she's said. Sharon is perfectly nice - Darcy wouldn't necessarily call her a friend, but that's only because they haven't spent a whole lot of time together. Steve likes her, and she seems to like him, and if Steve gets past the weirdness that is her being related to Peggy, he might ask her out.

Which is why they need to make a decision about what they're going to do, because if Steve gets together with Sharon, they will have missed any chance they might have had.

"So, okay," Bucky says softly. "You sound like you maybe know what you're talkin' about with this three-way business. So explain it to me like I'm stupid. How's it work?"

Darcy smiles slightly, pressing a gentle kiss to the side of his neck. "First of all," she says, "it's not called a three-way. It's called polyamory. I'll give you a crash course on all the fun permutations of sexualities that exist later, because there's a lot to take in and it can get really complex, but the short version, for our purposes, is that it's a relationship just like ours, only it's more than just two people."

"So it'd be... I mean, it wouldn't be like sleepin' around."

"No. I'm not interested in an open relationship with anyone, because it gets too complicated and I get jealous. So if we did this, we would still be exclusive - just like you and I are - only now we would include Steve."

Bucky nods slowly as he thinks about this. "So... all three of us on dates? Havin' dinner, watchin' t.v., all of that. And sex."

"And sex," Darcy agrees. "I'm sure you know how that works, so I won't bore you with the minutiae."

He tweaks her nose. "Smartass."

She grins. "See? It's not so hard to understand. It's the same relationship, just more people. Well, one more person."

He purses his lips, considering, as his eyes stray to a picture hanging on the wall. "What about Steffie?"

"She's two and a half," Darcy points out. "She's not going to know or care what we're doing in bed at night any more than she knows or cares what you and I do at night now. The only thing she's going to notice or care about is that Uncle Steve is around more, and she'll love that." She sits up again, resting her hands on his shoulders. "When you bring a third person into a relationship, it makes things a little more complicated. It means more talking about feelings and more consideration for each other, making sure nobody feels left out or ignored. But it also means that there's more love, and more people who love. And for Steffie, it means having more people around all the time who love her, and that can only be a good thing, right?"

Bucky nods again, his eyes boring into hers with that sniper focus. "Yeah," he agrees softly. "I think you're right."

"So, let's get back to my original question," Darcy says. "Are you ready to do anything about that poorly-hidden, unrequited hard-on?"

Bucky laughs softly, pulling her in for a kiss. "Yeah," he says when he finally lets her go. "Yeah, I think I am." He runs his thumb over her cheek. "So how should we do this?"

"I have a couple of ideas," Darcy offers.

It takes a few days - and one mission against an AIM base in Missouri of all places - before they have a chance to find out how Steve feels about things. Once that chance comes, unplanned though it is, they decide to make the most of it.

Darcy is waiting outside the conference room while the Avengers finish debriefing, ostensibly with things for Tony; she catches Steve by the arm as he starts out of the room and says, "Why don't you come have dinner with us tonight? I put in a lasagna when I knew you'd be home."

He gives her a smile, tired but genuine and grateful. "I'd love to. Can I come by early enough to see Steffie before bedtime?"

"She'll get her feelings hurt if you don't," Darcy replies, grinning. She gives him a pat on the bicep. "Go take a shower and relax for a little while. I'll have JARVIS wake you up at five, how's that sound?"

"Perfect." Impulsively, he leans in and drops a kiss on her forehead. "Thanks, Darce."

She smiles, watching him go, and when her eyes leave his form, they snap onto the face of her boyfriend. Bucky is grinning at her through the dirt and smoke stains on his face. "Tonight, huh?"

She shrugs. "Unless you're too tired - both of you. Either way, I made lasagna."

He swoops in on her then, pressing a kiss to her mouth that tastes of smoke and violence. "You are absolutely the best," he says, his voice low and sincere. "I'm going up for a shower."

"Take a nap, too," Darcy calls after him. Then she pauses. "The best _what?_ "

His laughter is the only reply she gets, and by the time she's able to force a StarkPad and a packet of confidential files into Tony's hands, he's gone. She rolls her eyes and asks JARVIS to wake both Bucky and Steve at five, and then she goes back to work.

A little after five o'clock, Darcy swings down to the fifteenth floor to pick up Steffie from day care. The girl is very excited about her day - the teacher brought in a box of ducklings, and the children were all allowed to pet them (very carefully and with supervision, Darcy is assured) - and she makes _peep peep_ noises all the way back home. 

When the door swings open, the first thing Steffie sees is Steve sitting on the couch with a bottle in his hands. "Steeb!" she shouts, flinging her arms up into the air.

Grinning widely, Steve sets his drink aside on the little table beside the couch and holds out his hands to her. She pelts across the floor and flings herself up into his lap, and he catches her, cuddling her close. "Hey, there," he greets her, tweaking her nose. "How's my best girl?"

"Ducking!" Steffie shouts. "Steeb! Ducking at stool!"

Steve cocks an eyebrow at her. "You don't say."

"There were ducklings at school," Darcy translates, detouring through the kitchen to drop a kiss on Bucky's cheek while he makes the salad. "And I'm going to take a quick shower. Try not to spoil her rotten before I get back."

"Too late," Steve replies, grinning, and then he turns his attention back to Steffie, who is earnestly telling him all about the ducklings and their _peep peep_ sounds. 

By the time Darcy returns, freshly washed and casual in a pair of shorts and a tank top, Steve and Steffie are in the floor building something with Steffie's Legos and Bucky is just pulling the lasagna out of the oven. "Perfect timing," he comments. He dishes up a small amount into a bowl for Steffie, cutting the pasta into small pieces and spreading it out to cool off.

Darcy ducks around him, grabbing a loaf of crusty bread out of the breadbox and popping it into the still-hot oven. Then she looks up at him, grinning slightly. "We still on?" she asks, her voice low.

"Yep," he replies easily, grinning. "Later, though."

"Well, I wasn't planning on _now,_ " she replies, poking his stomach.

He smirks, dropping a warm kiss on her lips, and glances into the wine cooler. "Cabernet?"

"Sure," she replies, going onto her tiptoes for glasses from the cupboard above the stove. The movement makes the hem of her tank rise up, and Bucky can't resist the draw of all the bare skin thus revealed; he leans over to press a kiss to her side, catching her at a ticklish spot. Startled, she squeals and jumps, and the wine glass that was in her hand shatters on the floor tiles.

"Shit!" Bucky exclaims. He swoops her up into his arms immediately, depositing her on the kitchen counter and checking her bare feet. "You didn't step on any, did you?"

"I don't think so," she replies. Then she whacks him gently on the top of the head. "You idiot."

He flushes. "Sorry, Doll." He steps over the mess and goes into the pantry for the broom and dust pan. When he returns, Steve is leaning against the counter on the living room side.

Steffie, having been passed through, is kneeling on the cabinet beside Darcy, looking down at the mess. She raises her head to look at him, and points at the broken glass on the floor. "Shit, Daddy," she says.

"No," he replies. "Broken glass."

Darcy chokes on a laugh; Steve just rolls his eyes. Bucky cleans up what he can while Steve retrieves Darcy's blue Converse from the bedroom so that she can walk across the kitchen floor without worrying about any shards that might have been missed. "I'll mop tomorrow," Bucky promises.

"You're darn right you will," she replies, grinning at him.

This time, Steve gets the wine glasses down while Darcy pulls the bread out of the oven, and dinner is served without further shenanigans. After it's eaten, Bucky and Steve take Steffie in for her bath while Darcy does the washing up. At eight, it's time for Steffie's story, and she will of course accept it from nobody but Steve, so he carries her into her room and sits down in the big rocking chair, cuddling her in his lap and telling her all about a princess whose kingdom is being menaced by a dragon.

Just when diplomatic negotiations are breaking down and the princess is grimly considering that she might have to put on her armor and settle things the old-fashioned way, Steffie falls asleep in his arms. He strokes her hair back, presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head, and lifts her gently into her crib, tucking her in with her Bucky Bear and turning on the butterfly night light before stepping out and returning to the living room.

When Steve enters the room, Bucky is on the sofa, his feet up on the coffee table and Darcy in his lap. Their wine glasses are sitting on the end table to Bucky's left, and Darcy's head is resting on Bucky's shoulder. Steve feels a warm rush in his chest; he's so glad Bucky found someone, and for that someone to be as perfect for him as Darcy fills him with enough joy that he could almost burst with it.

Then Darcy raises her head and holds out a hand to him, and he's helpless; he comes to her, allowing her to draw him down onto the couch beside Bucky. She turns in Bucky's lap and tosses her legs across Steve's. His hands fall almost automatically to rest on her feet, which are bare again, and she wiggles her toes at him, grinning. "So," she says, "Bucky and I want to talk to you about something."

"Okay," Steve says. He squeezes her feet warmly. "You know that whatever you need - "

"Not like that," Bucky interrupts. "This is... different."

Quite suddenly, Steve realizes that there is a charge in the air. It's something about the way Darcy is staring at him - the same way she used to stare at Bucky when he wasn't looking, before they got together. There's a hunger in her eyes that makes him swallow against a suddenly dry mouth. "Okay," he says again. "I'm listening."

But instead of speaking, Darcy moves. She pulls one leg back and shifts forward out of Bucky's lap, straddling Steve's, her backside resting on his knees. He's fairly sure he looks like a deer in headlights, if Bucky's chuckle is any indication, but Darcy isn't laughing. She's studying his face carefully, as though she'll find the answers to whatever questions she wants to ask in his eyes.

Finally, she opens her mouth. "Bucky and I," she says, "have been talking. About you. And about how much we both care about you, and how much we enjoy having you in our lives."

"Well..." He pauses, clearing his throat. "You know I'm always here for you."

"We know," Bucky assures him, turning sideways on the couch to face him. "That ain't what she means."

Darcy takes Steve's hands in hers. "We wanted to extend an invitation to you," she says softly. "And if it's not something you're interested in or comfortable with, that's fine. We'll consider the subject closed. But if it _is_ something you're interested in... there's a place for you here. With us. And we'd like you to take it."

"A place for me," he repeats, his thumbs rubbing rhythmically on the backs of her hands. "With you."

"Yeah," Bucky confirms. "With us."

"With - you mean,  _with?_ Like...  _with?_ "

Darcy giggles softly. "Yes, Steve.  _With_ . As in, together with. Both of us."

"Just... okay, understand that this is kind of comin' outta left field for me," Steve says. "I just wanna clarify. You're inviting me... to join in? Like, one night?"

Darcy shakes her head. "No. We're inviting you to _be with_ us. Long-term. If that's something you want."

"Both of you," Steve clarifies again, his eyes cutting to Bucky. "Not just sharing Darcy, but...  _both_ of you."

Bucky's cheeks are bright red, but his eyes are slightly defiant. "Yeah," he says, all Brooklyn sass. "Both of us. That okay?"

"Sure it's okay," Steve responds automatically. "I just didn't know you... liked me like that."

Bucky shrugs. "Didn't know how you felt," he explains. "Too much of a risk if you didn't."

That makes sense to Steve. Back before the war, back when you didn't talk about those kinds of things, it would've been a big risk for either of them to come out to the other without knowing what kind of response to expect. In the here and now, though, when a gifset of Steve going toe-to-toe against a FOX News commentator on the right of gays to marry is the most reblogged Tumblr post of all time, it makes sense that Bucky feels a little more confident about expressing his affection.

He reaches up, cupping Darcy's face with his right hand. "You're sure about this," he said.

Darcy nods. "We're sure. We - both of us - care about you a lot. Bucky loves you, he always has. Steffie adores you. So, yeah. We're sure. You'll always be family, no matter what, but we'd like you to also be our partner, if that's something you want."

He reaches out with his left hand and grips the side of Bucky's neck. "I think," he says softly, "that there's nothing I would like more." Then he draws her down into a soft, warm kiss. He only holds her for a moment, though, and then he releases her, turning to Bucky and pulling him close. "I have to warn you," he says softly. "I've never done this with a man before."

Bucky grins. "Me, neither," he replies. "Reckon we'll figure it out as we go along." And then he leans up to kiss Steve, hot and desperate and filled with all the longing they could never express as young men. When they part, both of them are breathing hard and their eyes have gone dark.

Darcy gives a low whistle. "That was  _hot,_ " she says, grinning. "Let's go back to the bedroom and do that again."


	16. After All, Miss, This is France

It is the week after Labor Day and New York is sweltering. Even Steve, who usually makes a daily run around Central Park, cannot be convinced to stir outside of the air conditioned tower, running instead on the reinforced treadmill in the gym.

Everything is slow; the Avengers have not been called out for even a small job in several days, and Bucky is going stir crazy. Darcy's work is slow as well, because Bruce is out of the country and Jane has gone to Asgard with Thor. Steffie is moping because her best friend Arin, who is six months older, started kindergarten without her.

On Thursday, as he studies his listless family across the dinner table in their apartment, Bucky Barnes makes an executive decision. "Screw this," he says. "Let's go on vacation."

Steve looks up, blinking at him. "Vacation, Buck?" he asks, a slight smile gracing his lips. "I haven't been on vacation since the last time I took a seventy year ice nap."

Darcy snorts softly. "It's not a vacation if you're sleeping on the job, Rogers," she says, poking him in the ribs with a finger. Then she looks up at Bucky. "What did you have in mind?"

"Someplace that ain't New York," Bucky replies. "Someplace we can have some fun."

"Hmm." Darcy cocks an eye at Steffie, who is looking around the table at her adults with wide eyes. "Well," she says, "I can think of at least one place where we can all have a _lot_ of fun."

Steve looks scandalized. "Not in front of the _child!_ "

Darcy rolls her eyes. "JARVIS," she says. "Could you please book us some passes to Disney World in Orlando? And a room at one of the hotels in the park, please."

"Of course, Miss Lewis," JARVIS replies easily. "For tomorrow?"

"Yes," Darcy confirms. "A week's stay."

There is a moment's pause before JARVIS returns. "Your tickets are confirmed," he says. "Do you have a preference regarding which resort hotel I should book?"

"Um." Darcy considers. "Can you give me a bullet point list of amenities at each one?"

"Of course." A moment later, the list appears on the table's surface. The three adults all lean forward, examining it.

After some debate, they eventually settle on the Beach Club, since it has beach access and a supervised children's activity center, so that - as Steve points out reasonably - Steffie can get a little parent-free time playing with kids her age in a safe environment, and her parents can get a little time on their own for... he pauses and says, quite delicately, "Parent time."

Darcy's cheeks go bright red, and Bucky's eyes go dark. "JARVIS," he says, "book it."

"Done, sir," JARVIS replies. "I have also taken the liberty of arranging your transportation; Mr. Stark says he has no need of the small jet this week, and has authorized you to use it. He requests that you bring him back a set of Mickey Mouse ears."

Steve laughs. "Deal."

Flying with a bright, inquisitive, and active four-year-old would be trying under most circumstances; flying with Steffie on Stark's small jet is fantastic, because aside from takeoffs and landings, she can be let to wander mostly on her own without much fear. There are, of course, places she cannot go - the galley, the cockpit, the hold, Pepper's office - but otherwise, Steffie roams as freely on the plane as she would at home. Which leaves her parents free to relax in the main lounge area.

Steve and Bucky sit at the table, playing hand after hand of gin rummy with Tony's poker chips and trading insults like they're in a sweltering Brooklyn tenement; Darcy curls up in a chair underneath one of the windows, alternately napping and reading a book on her Kindle. Every so often, Steffie passes through the room, digs through her bag of toys, and chooses something else to run around with.

Somewhere over Virginia, Darcy convinces her to lie down for a nap on one of the couches, then returns to her spot by the window. Steve gets up and wanders off to the bathroom to stretch his legs, and Bucky crosses the lounge to wrap his arms around Darcy from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder and breathing in the scent of her shampoo. "You okay, Doll?" he asks her softly.

"Mmm," she replies, blinking up at him with heavy eyes. "Yeah, why?"

He shrugs. "Dunno, you just seem... like you're kinda far away."

She presses a kiss to his cheek. "I'm good," she says. "Just kinda tired. Traveling, you know."

"Uh-huh." He doesn't look convinced, but he lets it go, returning to the table and the game when Steve comes back. Darcy falls asleep in the chair again. Bucky notices but refrains from comment, filing it away.

The Magic Kingdom really is magic - for all of them. Neither Steve nor Bucky has ever been before, so in addition to getting to watch the baby fall in love with the place, Darcy gets to watch her boys do the same thing. They buy Tony his mouse ears first thing; Bucky chooses a pair with a jaunty red-and-white polka-dot bow in the middle, and has it delivered back to their hotel room to keep it safe. They spend the morning doing all the usual things: the Dumbo ride, the spinning tea cups, _It's a Small World After All_ , and of course chasing the princesses. Steffie is madly in love with Mulan at the moment, and once she realizes that the princesses are actually _there, in the park where she can hug them,_ nothing will satisfy her until she has met Mulan herself. Steve pays for a photo pass so that they don't have to keep track of pictures, but Darcy takes tons on her phone anyway. So does Bucky.

They have a late lunch after finally meeting Mulan, and then Bucky declares that it is naptime for little princesses. Steffie, who by now is wearing her own set of mouse ears as well as most of a chocolate milk and half an ice cream cone, protests volubly - which only convinces Steve and Darcy to back Bucky up. Steffie, who is gently cosseted at home for the most part, melts down into a full-on tantrum at this point and then throws up into a flower bed and has to be carried back to the hotel, crying most of the way.

Once they are back in their suite, Bucky takes over; he runs a warm bath with bubbles, dons his swim trunks, and climbs into the tub with Steffie, holding her in his lap and letting his closeness, the warm water, and the gentle smell of lavender help calm her overstimulated senses. When she's almost asleep in his arms, he climbs out, drying her off and dressing her in the old t-shirt of his that she prefers to sleep in, then tucks her into the bed and sings her Irish lullabies that his mother sang to him until she's out.

When he comes out, Steve and Darcy are on the couch, their feet up on the coffee table. Steve raises an eyebrow. "She asleep?"

"Out like a light," Bucky reports. "Too much sugar, too much excitement."

Darcy nods. "I remember the first time we went to Disney," she says. "I was a teenager, but my youngest sister was about the same age Steffie is now. Too much cotton candy and sunshine, and she did exactly the same thing Steffie did: got overstimulated, started crying, and ended up barfing in a fountain."

Bucky laughs softly. "Well, at least it ain't just Steffie."

"Oh, hell no," Darcy replies, grinning. "I'd venture that three-quarters or more of kids under ten have to be hauled out of the park screaming with puke down their shirts every day." She shakes her head. "It's all the excitement they're not used to. She'll do better tomorrow."

Bucky nods, dropping down onto the sofa on the other side of Steve and resting his forehead against Steve's shoulder. "Honestly, I feel like I could use a nap right now as much as she can."

"Then let's all take a nap," Steve suggests. "This afternoon we can go to the pool or the beach, which is a little more low-key, and then we can try the park again in the morning."

"That sounds like a great idea," Darcy agrees.

Bucky nods. "Let's do that."

The plan works; Steffie wakes refreshed from her nap and gets excited about the idea of the beach; a few hours there result in a pleasant tiredness rather than the overwrought exhaustion of the morning, and an early dinner and bedtime follow. It's Darcy's night for the bedtime routine, and while she's watching Steffie brush her teeth she asks, "Did you have a good time today?"

Steffie nods, spitting into the sink. "I didn't like barfing though."

"No, you got a little overworked this morning. It's okay, though. Nobody's mad at you."

Steffie nods, rinsing with her bubblegum-flavored mouthwash, and then asks, "Do you think we can go back someday?"

Darcy laughs softly, leaning down to kiss the girl's forehead. "We're going back tomorrow, honey."

"Yay!"

The next day is better; they still leave the park after lunch, but there is no meltdown this time, and Steve puts her down for her nap without incident. They spend the afternoon at the pool, which has waterslides, have dinner together, and then Steffie goes to bed in her room and the three adults go to bed in theirs.

This becomes their vacation routine, and it works well as they make their way through the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT center, and the Animal Kingdom park. On the fifth day, they change things up; they spend all day at one of the waterslide parks, taking a risk and skipping naptime but also carefully monitoring Steffie's water and sugar intakes. When they return to the hotel in the early evening, Steffie gets about a half hour of sleep on one of the couches before Bucky wakes her.

"Hey, Dollface," he says gently, pulling her into his lap. "Listen, we're gonna do a little bit different thing tonight, okay?"

"What we gonna do, Daddy?" Steffie murmurs into his shoulder, still half asleep.

"Daddy and Steve and Darcy are gonna get a little dressed up tonight and go have a fancy dinner," he explains. "One of those places you don't like because they don't have crayons."

"Mmm," Steffie says. She rubs at her face. "But who's gonna watch me?" she asks. "Is Uncle Clint coming?"

"No, baby, Uncle Clint's still in New York. So's everybody else." Bucky grins. "They have a place here in the hotel where you can go, it's a kids' club, and you can watch movies and play games and hang out with some other kids. Kind of like your day care at home, yeah? And then after we have fancy dinner, we'll come get you, and we'll come back here for sleep. Okay?"

"Okay." Steffie rubs at her eyes again. "What we gonna do tomorrow?"

"You wanna go to an aquarium tomorrow? Look at the weird fish?"

Steffie nods, enthusiasm growing as she wakes up. "Yeah!" she says. "I like weird fish."

"I know you do."

"Do they have sea horses?"

"I don't know, baby," he says. "We'll find out tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay."

They drop Steffie off at the activity center in the hotel and then cross the resort to the restaurant where they have their reservations. It turns out that they needed that quiet evening to themselves, without Steffie present; by the time they've finished eating, they've been able to reconnect in a way that they haven't in some time, and all three of them are humming with each other's nearness.

Darcy suggests a short walk outside, in the sand; her boys agree immediately, and they head out, strolling through the quiet evening with the moon shining bright overhead. She finds them a beach lounger in a relatively quiet spot and they sit together, arms around one another, sharing soft touches and gentle kisses and reveling in the opportunity to simply _be together_ in a way that they don't get to in New York, when there are jobs and responsibilities and Steffie and Avenging. Not that they would give up a minute of any of it, but it's nice, sometimes, to just be together like that. Steve says as much, his arms wrapped around Darcy's waist and his hands clasping Bucky's.

They are quiet together for a long few minutes. Then Darcy speaks. "I have something I have to tell you both," she says.

"Ah," Bucky breathes. "Finally."

She raises an eyebrow. "What?"

He shakes his head. "You've had something on your mind for awhile, Doll," he says. "Been waiting on you to share it."

She smiles. "You know me so well." She reaches for her little purse and opens it, pulling out a small piece of paper about four inches by six inches. She hands it to Bucky, white side up.

Steve leans forward over her shoulder as Bucky flips the paper over, and there is a long moment of silence as all three of them look at the simple black and white image printed on the paper. Finally, Steve says, "Is that what I think it is?"

"It's an ultrasound," Bucky replies, his voice full of wonder. "Darce." He looks up at her, his eyes huge and dark in the night.

Darcy nods, glancing back over her shoulder at Steve to see his reaction. He is staring at her in shock, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears. "Darcy," he whispers.

Darcy nods. "Fourteen weeks," she says softly.

The two men glance at one another. "Madripoor," Bucky says, and laughs softly. "Go figure."

Steve grins, remembering how anxious they'd been to get back home after that two-week mission. They'd pulled Darcy out of the labs the moment they got back to the tower, dragging her back to their apartment for an afternoon full of reunion that hadn't ended until someone had to get dressed and go pick up Steffie from day care. He leans down, resting his face against the side of Darcy's neck. "This is... amazing," he murmurs against her skin. "Our baby."

Bucky is smiling, but there are tears trickling down his face. "Darce," he whispers, leaning his forehead against the back of her head. "This is... I can't believe it."

Darcy smiles, her hand coming up to cup his cheek. "I wasn't sure how you'd feel. I mean, I know you love Steffie, but..."

"But nothing," he replies, catching her hand and holding it tightly. "Did you think I wouldn't want us to have another kid?"

Darcy swallows hard. "Well, that's the thing," she says. " _Us._ "

He understands her immediately. "Darcy," he says, " _We_ already have a kid. Steffie's as much yours and Steve's as she is mine. Just because I had her first, it doesn't mean you're not her Ma and Steve ain't her other Dad."

Darcy smiles, her eyes a little wet, too. "I wasn't totally sure how you felt," she admits. "But it's going to come up."

"We'll worry about that when it comes up," Bucky decrees. He reaches down, laying his free hand on her stomach. "For now, let's just be thankful, yeah?"

"Yeah," Steve murmurs.

Darcy laughs softly, her joy spilling free into the warm Florida night. "Yeah."


	17. She was sent here from heaven and she's daddy's little girl

Darcy is about seven months along when Steffie learns about where babies come from. It happens like this: Steffie bounces out of the elevator at her daycare on the end of Darcy's arm and she stops in her tracks at the sight of another mother with a new baby. She looks up and says, “Darcy? Is the new baby still in your tummy?”

Darcy takes Steffie to the side and sits down with her. She explains that the new baby is, in fact, still in her tummy, and reminds Steffie that he will remain in residence there for at least a couple more months before he comes out. When Steffie wants to know how he will get out, Darcy explains the mechanics of birth in simple biological terms, and she fields the follow up question - “Wait, but how did he get _in_ there in the first place?” - with what she thinks is considerable aplomb. She does not, however, anticipate the consequences that Bucky will have to deal with later.

Because Darcy does not see Bucky that afternoon - he decides on the spur of the moment to pick Steffie up early and take her to the park - she doesn't get a chance to warn him that Steffie is asking stork-related questions. So Bucky is completely blindsided when Steffie asks, over street-cart hot dogs and lemonade, “Daddy? I'm confused. Darcy said babies only come out of mommies, but I don't have a mommy, so where did I come out of?”

Bucky freezes with his hot dog halfway to his mouth and stares at his child like a deer in headlights for a long moment before putting it back down. “Why don't you tell me what Darcy told you,” he says, “and we'll go from there.”

So Steffie explains about seeing Erin's mommy with her new baby, and how she wanted to know how their new baby got in there to begin with, and how Darcy said something about Daddy and Steve loving her very much and a very special kind of hug for grownups, “and something about planting seeds inside her parts, but I didn't really get that part, do they come from the farmer's market like the carrots we grew last summer?”

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose and tries very hard not to laugh as he visualizes the packets of seeds they bought to grow a little rooftop garden. Finally he says, “No.” He takes a deep breath, organizes his thoughts carefully, and says, “Carrot seeds come from carrots. People seeds - the kind you use to make a baby with - come from people. Daddies have one and mommies have another, and when you put them together, it makes a baby grow.”

Steffie gets that funny, scrunched-up face she gets when she's trying to process something that's a little over her head. Finally she says, “But I still don't know where I came out of. I don't have a mommy.”

“You used to,” Bucky says. He swallows hard. He figured this would come, but he wasn't expecting it so soon. How do you explain this to a four year old? But Steffie is staring at him like he's grown another head, so he figures he'd better get on with it. He puts his hot dog aside on the park bench and says, “Come here.”

She comes, and he pulls her up into his lap, cuddling her close so that she feels safe for this conversation. “When you were a very tiny baby,” he begins, “you had a mommy and a daddy and you lived in a place called Iowa.”

“That's where Uncle Clint is from.”

“Yes, it is.” He strokes her hair. “So, you lived in Iowa with your mommy and daddy, and their names were Jessica and Wade.”

She jerks slightly, looking up at him with huge, wide eyes. “No,” she says, slowly. “Your name is Bucky, but sometimes it's James.”

“That's right,” he says. “When you were first born, I wasn't your daddy.”

She looks very confused for a long moment, and her face crumples up like she might cry. “Didn't you want to be my daddy when I was born?”

He presses a kiss to her forehead. “I didn't know about you when you were born,” he says. “I didn't even meet you until you were two months old.”

She stares at him, her mouth slightly open in shock. “But... why?”

“Because you were born in Iowa and I lived here. It's a long way from Iowa and I didn't know your mommy and daddy, so I never met you.” He strokes her hair back with his human hand. “But then a very bad thing happened.” He pauses, considering how to sanitize this story for a four year old. With a sigh, he decides blunt is better and he'll deal with the nightmares as they come. “Some bad people came to the house where you lived, and they killed your mommy and daddy.”

He hadn't thought it was possible for her eyes to get any bigger, but they do, and begin to shimmer with tears. “Why?”

He shakes his head. “That's a story for when you're older,” he says, using the firm tone that tells her he really means it. “What's important right now is that Steve and I came to the house with a SHIELD team and we caught those bad guys, and we put them in jail. And that's how I met you, because you were there in the house. You were just a tiny little thing, only about this big.” He holds up his hands about a foot apart from one another.

“Then what happened?” Steffie asks, fascinated. She's never heard this story before.

“Well, you were very hungry, because the bad guys didn't know you were in the house so you hadn't been fed. But Steve didn't know how to feed you right, so you wouldn't take the bottle from him. So I held you, and you took the bottle from me, and I knew right then that I wanted to bring you home with me and make you my little girl.” He kisses her forehead again. “So I brought you home, and Uncle Tony called his lawyers and they helped me do the paperwork, and I adopted you. And now I'm your daddy.”

“Oh,” she says. She looks down, watching her fingers as they play against his metal hand. Finally she says, “Will you always be my daddy now?”

“Yes,” he assures her. “Always.”

"Even after the new baby comes?"

"Even then," he says. "I promise. I will always be your daddy, no matter what happens. Okay?"

“Okay,” she says. And she cuddles against him, and he wraps his arms around her and holds her close.


	18. Welcome to this place (I'll show you everything)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was prompted by Citymusings, who said something about Steffie looking at the baby on the ultrasound and my brain went "it is time for the new baby to arrive."

A few weeks after Steffie's fifth birthday, Steve comes into her room in the middle of the night. He doesn't turn the light on, but he sits down on the side of the bed and strokes her hair, waking her up gently. "Hey, Sweetheart," he murmurs.

"Steve?" she mumbles. She can hear her Daddy talking to Darcy in the other room. "Wha's goin' on?"

"I just wanted you to know that we're going out, your Daddy and me and Darcy, but Uncle Clint is here on the couch if you need anything, and he'll get your breakfast for you. Okay?"

"'Kay." She yawns hard. "Izzit bad guys?"

He chuckles. "No, honey, it's not bad guys. Everything's fine, and you don't need to worry about a thing. Okay? Go back to sleep, and Uncle Clint will tell you all about it in the morning."

"'Kay," she says again, putting her head back down on the pillow. Steve retrieves her teddy bear from where it got stuck between the mattress and the wall, and she wraps her arms around it, snuggling back down into the warmth.

He stands up and pulls the blankets up over her shoulders, and then he leans down and kisses her on the forehead. "Love you, Steffie-girl," he tells her.

"Love you, too, Steve," she mumbles back, and then she is asleep again and she dreams about flying on the back of a dragon.

When Steffie wakes up, she has forgotten about the late night visit from Steve. She yawns and stretches and rolls out of the bed, and then she digs under the blankets to find her bear, who has somehow found his way all the way down to the foot of the bed. "Munda!" she scolds him. "How did you get down there? You don't belong down there." She taps him on the nose once, the way her Daddy sometimes does to her when he wants to make a point but she isn't really in trouble, and then she pulls her bedroom door open and pads out into the living room because she can smell sausage cooking.

She is surprised that Daddy is not the one cooking; Daddy is usually the one who makes breakfast while Darcy showers and Steve goes down to the gym to run. But this morning it's Uncle Clint standing at the stove, and Steffie suddenly remembers that Steve came in during the night and said goodbye. "Hi!" she chirps, pulling out one of the tall barstools and climbing up onto it.

"Morning, Munchkin," Uncle Clint says. "Hungry?"

"Yes!" she says. She watches him put some sausages on a plate. They are the best kind: long, fat, juicy sausages that Steve says are called links, but not Link like in Zelda, link like in a chain because when Steve and Daddy were small, sausages used to come from the butcher in long chains and you could hang them up from the ceiling to keep the rats from getting them. "Uncle Clint, are there rats here?"

"Here in the building or here in New York?"

"Here in the building."

"No." Uncle Clint says. He cuts up little squares of cream cheese into the hot frying pan and they both watch for a moment as the little squares go soft, and then he cracks an egg into the pan and mixes them up with the cream cheese. Steffie likes it when there is cream cheese in her eggs, because plain eggs smell bad and the one time Daddy said she had to eat them because he forgot the cheese and they were late, she yakked all over the table. "I like cream cheese," she says.

"I know you do," he replies, reaching across the counter to ruffle her hair.

"I have to eat them all myself. Munda doesn't like cream cheese," she explains. Steffie isn't sure why Uncle Clint always laughs when she says her bear's name; she asked him once, but he just said never mind.

"Well, cream cheese isn't good for bears," Uncle Clint says. "Gives them the rumbly tummy." He scoops the eggs out of the pan and onto the plate with the sausage, spreading them out. She can see the steam climbing up in curls and whirls and spirals. The toaster pops, and Uncle Clint says, "Do you want butter and jam?"

"Yes, please." She looks down at Munda, who is sitting very politely on the other barstool. "Munda wants jam, too." Munda never gets to have jam; Daddy says no. Maybe Uncle Clint will -

"Munda cannot have jam," Uncle Clint says. "It gets all in Munda's fur and then she has to have a bath, and you know how she doesn't like baths." Darn.

Steffie sighs. Uncle Clint puts a piece of toast onto the plate. It is coated with butter and what looks like orange marmalade. Orange marmalade is Daddy's favorite; Steffie prefers strawberry. But she will eat the orange today because Uncle Clint made her breakfast and Daddy says it is not polite to be fussy about food when someone else fixed it.

Uncle Clint brings Steffie the plate and a spoon. Steffie eats her eggs first, and then her toast. She picks up one of her sausage links and then she says, "Uncle Clint? Where's my Daddy?"

Uncle Clint grins. "I was wondering how long it'd take you to ask," he says. "Your Daddy and Steve had to take Darcy to the hospital this morning because it was time for the new baby to come."

Steffie drops her sausage link onto her plate. She can feel her eyes getting huge. "Really?"

Uncle Clint nods. "Really. And once you finish your breakfast and brush your teeth and change your clothes, we'll go and see them."

This is amazing news! Steffie forgets all about her disappointment over Munda and the jam in her excitement over the new baby, and she hurries to finish her sausage, because the new baby is _much_ more exciting than sausage links, even if sausage links _are_ her favorite.

She doesn't like the part where Uncle Clint has to put his finger in her throat to get the sausage out. He says that's called _choking_ and now her throat hurts a little bit and she feels kind of sorry for herself so he hugs her and lets her cry a little bit on his shoulder. Then he puts her down in her seat again and he wipes her face off with a paper towel and he says, "Are you finished eating?"

She nods and he makes her blow her nose and then he says, "Go brush your teeth and get dressed while I wash up."

She goes, forgetting about Munda on the barstool. She brushes her teeth very thoroughly with the new toothbrush Darcy bought her (it has Spider-Man on it, which is fun, because she met Spider-Man once and he was very silly but also very nice). She has to sing the whole alphabet song while she brushes, to make sure she gets all the spots, all the way to the _next time won't you sing with me_ part. When she's done, she spits and she rinses and then she rinses again with the bubblegum flavored mouthwash that Steve says will keep her from having cavities. She doesn't know what cavities are, but she's pretty sure they're probably bad guys.

Then she trots into her bedroom. She shucks her nightshirt and leaves it on the bed. She contemplates her Ninja Turtle underoos, wondering if she should change them, but they were clean after her bath last night so probably they're okay. Her clothes for today are folded up on her reading chair; she pulls on the shirt, which is one of her favorites because it is black with a shiny foil cat on the front, and she pulls on her socks, which are blue, and she pulls on her jeans but there isn't a zipper, only buttons, and she needs some help with that, so she calls Uncle Clint and he comes and helps her. Then she puts on her shoes and when Uncle Clint asks if she needs help with them, she proudly demonstrates that she has learned how to tie them herself.

Uncle Clint steers her into the bathroom and she kneels on the counter while he brushes her hair and ties it up in a ponytail. Then he gets her jacket out of the coat closet and his own off the couch and he helps her put her jacket on. The he kneels down and he looks at her very seriously and he says, "Steffie, we're going to go on the subway. I need to know if you can hold my hand the whole time, or if I need to stick you in your harness."

Steffie's jaw drops. "Uncle Clint!" she exclaims. "I'm a big girl! I don't need a harness!"

He gives her a look that means he is Not Joking Around and he says, "You promise to hold my hand the whole time?"

She looks deep into his eyes. "I promise," she says.

"Okay." He stands up. "Let's go."

They are almost to the elevator when she realizes that she forgot Munda and they have to go back, but then they are really-really-really ready and they go downstairs and across the lobby and down under the street to the train station. And Steffie is absolutely on her best behavior and she stands right by Uncle Clint the whole time, and she holds his hand and doesn't let go even when there's a man playing the drums on a garbage can and another man doing tricks with a glass ball.

The hospital is big and kind of scary and smells funny, and Uncle Clint says it is the same hospital she went to when she was sick one time and the doctors there made her all better but she doesn't remember that. She holds Uncle Clint's hand even tighter and they go up up up in another elevator and when they come out, Steffie can hear babies crying.

Uncle Clint steers them down a hallway and then another hallway, and then they pause by a big window and he picks her up and lets her look through the window and see all the babies in their little plastic beds. "Which one is mine?" she asks.

Uncle Clint looks at all of them and says, "Yours isn't here."

Steffie frowns. "Why not?"

"Probably because he's with your Daddy and Steve and Darcy. C'mon, let's go see."

They go farther down the hall, and then they are stopping and Uncle Clint is tapping a rhythm on a door. A moment later, the door opens up and it's Steve, and he looks very tired but also very happy, and he reaches down and picks her up and gives her a little toss into the air for good measure. "Hey, Dollface," he says to her, and he gives her a kiss on the cheek. "Come see your new little brother."

He carries Steffie into the room, and Uncle Clint steps in behind them and closes the door. They walk around a curtain that's hanging from the ceiling and there is her Daddy with a big smile on his face. He is sitting beside the bed, and Darcy is in the bed, sitting up and holding the baby against her chest.

"Hey, Sweetheart," Daddy says, holding out his hands, and Steve brings her over and Steffie goes to him and he pulls her in tight for a warm hug. Then he lets her kneel on his lap across his legs and she gets her first look at her little brother.

"What's he doing?" she asks Darcy.

Darcy smiles. "He's eating," she explains. "I'll feed him this way until he gets teeth, and then he can start eating big people food."

"Oh." Steffie leans on the mattress and studies the baby. He's kind of reddish colored and he's very small and he doesn't have any hair at all. "He's very bald," she says.

The grownups all chuckle a little bit. "He'll grow hair," Steve says. "You were bald too, when you were born."

Steffie feels betrayed. "I was?"

Steve nods. "Your Daddy has pictures. We'll show you."

"Huh." She puts her hands on her head, feels all the hair that Uncle Clint put into her ponytail, and says, "Well. If it grows in."

"It does," Darcy promises. The baby's head falls back with a little sigh, and Darcy pulls up her shirt, and she puts the baby on her shoulder and pats his back until he burps. Then she says, "Do you want to hold him?"

Steffie does, very much, so Daddy puts her on the bed beside Darcy with her legs straight out, and they put the baby in her arms and Daddy shows her how to hold him and how to be careful of his floppy head. Steve uses his phone to take some pictures of her holding him, and then Clint takes the phone and takes pictures of all of them squished in together.

And then Steffie says, "What's his name?"

And Daddy says, "Mikey. Michael Andrew Stepanovich Barnes-Rogers."

Uncle Clint gives a low whistle. "That's a lot of names for a little guy."

"I have lots of names, too," Steffie says. "It's okay. It doesn't hurt."

She doesn't know why the grownups laugh at that, but she doesn't mind. She looks down at Mikey, and he's looking back at her with bright blue eyes like Steve's, and she smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bear joke is this: Steffie's bear is called Munda, which amuses Uncle Clint very much. Because the word is манда́, which is Russian for c*nt.


	19. Rest your head close to my heart (never to part)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After yesterday's chapter, this one was pretty much required.

There are a lot of things that Bucky Barnes has forgotten from before the war. Some of them were lost to HYDRA and their machines; others simply vanished to the mists of time. Most of them weren't all that important anyway, in the long run. The names of the girls he stepped out with; the face of the doctor who charged more than they could afford to come and listen to Steve's lungs; the location of the druggist who let Bucky buy Steve's medicine on credit and pay it off by working the counter and stocking shelves on the weekend.

One thing Bucky remembers, and remembers well, is the sharp, sudden realization that his new baby sister was more important than he was.

Strangely enough, it is the earliest thing he remembers. In this memory he is five years old, barefoot (so it must have been summer), dressed in short pants and a too-big, wide-collared shirt, and he is tugging at his mother's skirt, seeking her attention. When she turns around, she is holding the new baby - _Rebecca,_ he thinks, _her name was Rebecca_ \- at her breast, and she doesn't even look down at him. She nudges at his head with her fingertips, and she tells him to run along and play.

He isn't sure, will never be sure, but he thinks that might have been the day he ventured out alone into the streets of Brooklyn for the first time, and stumbled over Steve Rogers having an asthma attack in an alley.

Still, he remembers it clearly: the sharp pang of distress, of betrayal, when his child's mind recognized his mother's preoccupation and interpreted it as _Mama doesn't love me any more._ And he is determined that he may fail in many other ways as a parent - at five years old, his daughter has a mouth like a sailor and she knows _far_ more than she should about the explosive properties of household chemicals - but she will never, _ever_ have cause to think that he doesn't love her any more.

After Mikey is born, Bucky starts being extra careful about Steffie. He checks in with her every day, making sure that they get one-on-one time by themselves for at least a few minutes, so that if she needs to talk to her Daddy about something, she can. But he watches, too, because he knows his kid. She's freakishly bright and exceptionally intuitive, but she's also sensitive and easily hurt, and she's not very good at expressing her feelings. It's not that she's afraid to, it's just that she often doesn't know how. She struggles with putting words to the roiling mass of emotions that he sometimes sees swirling behind her eyes. He has a feeling she's going to grow up to be either a poet or a punk musician.

So after the third time he sees her flinch away from Darcy or Steve when they're holding Mikey, with a look on her face like she wants to cry but she doesn't want to be seen doing it, Bucky decides it's time to press for an answer. He hands over the dinner preparations to Steve, grabs his and Steffie's jackets, puts his phone in his pocket, and picks her up off the living room floor, swinging her onto his hip. "Let's go, kiddo," he says, and out the door they walk.

"Where we going, Daddy?" she asks in the elevator, as he helps her pull her jacket on.

"We're going to get pizza," he says. "Me and you."

Her eyes get huge. "But what about Steve and Darcy and... and Mikey?"

"They're going to have dinner at home," he says.

She's looking at him like he's grown another head, but he doesn't care. They cross the lobby into Grand Central and catch a train out to Brooklyn, and he takes her to a pizza place in Bay Ridge that makes a pretty good slice but is also generally pretty quiet and low key.

Once they order, Bucky turns in his chair and looks down at Steffie, who is sitting between him and the wall, her eyes intent on the coloring page the waitress gave her. He props his elbow on the table and rests his temple on his fist, and he watches her, and he waits. In just a minute, she glances up at him out of the corner of her eye. "What?"

"What, what?" he replies.

"What are you _starin'_ at?" she asks.

"You," he replies, grinning when she glares up at him. "What?"

"Quit it." She scowls fiercely and puts her head back down, glaring at the pizza maze on her placemat.

He leans over, resting the point of his chin on her shoulder. "Hey."

" _Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?_ " she whines.

He nudges her cheek with his nose. "How come you didn't want to sit on the couch with Darcy today?" he asks. "You always sit with Darcy."

She shakes her head, grabbing a different crayon. "I don't want to."

"How come?"

She shrugs. "She's sitting with Mikey now."

"Okay, but you know you can sit with her, too, right? Just because Mikey's there doesn't mean you can't be there."

"No," she says flatly.

He tilts his head, then reaches over and puts his hand on top of hers. "Stephanie," he says, and she looks up at him in surprise because he so rarely uses her full name. "I know you want to color, but I need you to talk to me right now."

She huffs a heavy sigh, but she puts her crayon down and turns to face him. He takes her hands. "Thank you," he says. "Now, I need you to tell me why you can't sit with her now. Is it because of Mikey? You don't like Mikey?"

She swallows hard, looking distressed. "No," she manages. She chews on her lip for a long moment before her face suddenly crumples and she bursts into tears. He pulls her into his lap immediately, holding her tight, and she wails into his neck about Tyler and Tyler's mom and someone who tried to steal Tyler's mom and it isn't _fair._ He's just as confused at the end of it as he was at the beginning, so he rubs her back and holds her tight and waits for her to finish sobbing so he can try to make her explain again.

Steffie is still sobbing when the waitress comes by, unashamedly checking to make sure that everything is all right. "It's fine," he assures her, still rubbing Steffie's back. "We have a new baby at home and emotions are running high, and I think someone at school might have said something upsetting. Sorry about the noise."

The waitress, clearly relieved, gives him a smile. "Don't worry about it," she says. "It happens. I've got two about her age myself, so I totally understand." She goes and comes back with a plastic cup of lemonade and Bucky convinces Steffie to try having a drink before she dehydrates, and she manages to calm herself down to random hiccups by the time their pizza arrives.

He wipes her face with a napkin and gets a few bites of pizza into her and then he says, "Take a deep breath and explain to me what happened with Tyler."

And when he gets the whole story, he realizes what's happened. Tyler's mother, a Stark Industries marketing analyst Bucky thinks he might have met once or twice, recently remarried. The new husband, a widower, brought a child of his own into the marriage, and the new child is apparently cozying up to Tyler's mother - what a psychologist would probably call _actively integrating with the new family_ \- and Tyler doesn't like it.

"That's _Tyler's_ mommy," Steffie says firmly. "It's not _fair_."

"Okay," Bucky says slowly, taking a bite of his own pizza to give himself time to think. "But what does that have to do with Darcy and Mikey?"

Steffie looks down at her hands. "I don't want Mikey to call me a poo-head."

Bucky Barnes has withstood torture and cryo-freeze and seventy years of Nazi brainwashing. He is _not_ going to be undone by the sound of the word _poo-head_ coming out of his child's mouth. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek until the urge to bray with laughter subsides, and then he manages to say, "And why do you think he would call you that?"

"Because Tyler said people who steal other people's mommies are poo-heads."

And the light goes on in Bucky's brain. He puts his pizza down and cups her chin, lifting her face up so that he can look into her eyes. "Steffie," he says, keeping his voice as gentle as possible, "are you upset because you want Darcy to be your mommy?"

This time when the tears come, she doesn't wail; she just leans her head against his chest and sobs like her heart is breaking.

He lets her finish crying, manages to get her to eat another slice of pizza, and then has the waitress wrap the rest of it up to carry home. By the time he gets there, she's asleep across his shoulder, and he hands off the box of pizza to Steve as he passes through the living room and into her bedroom. He lays her down on the bed, pulls her shoes off, and drapes a blanket over her; the rest of the bedtime routine can wait. It's early, and she'll probably wake up around ten or so anyway. He pulls the door partway closed, then walks back out into the living room and mutes the television. "Okay," he says. "Time to talk."

They sit down at the kitchen table, the three of them, and Bucky explains about the conversation he had with Steffie at dinner. The solution, to them, is patently obvious, and Steve says so immediately. Bucky agrees. "I just didn't want to, you know, put pressure on you two if it ain't somethin' you're ready for."

"Bucky," Darcy says, her tone as dry as the Mojave, "if we weren't ready for it, the time to speak up about that was approximately ten months ago. It's a _little late_ for that now."

Steve grins, and Bucky laughs. "No, you're right," Bucky says. "So here's what I was thinking. You know how Pepper got the lawyers to draw up paperwork making all three of us Mike's legal parents? There ain't nothing stopping us doing the same thing for Steffie." He pauses, swallowing hard, and collects his thoughts before continuing. "We've been together now, the three of us, almost three years. We're solid. And, hell, you two were helpin' raise her even before that. You've both been parents to her almost as much as I have. And there's a part of me, inside, that don't want to share her, not even one little bit, but the part of me that's her daddy wants the best for her, and if you two ain't it, I don't know what would be."

Steve reaches across the table and takes Bucky's hands in his. "Buck," he says simply, "yes."

Darcy, smiling, does the same thing, putting her own hands on top of theirs. "Yes," she echoes. "Absolutely."

"Okay," Bucky says. He clears his throat. "Okay."

As he predicted, Steffie stumbles out of her room during _Elementary'_ s first commercial break, bleary-eyed and puffy-faced. Bear in hand, she staggers across the living room like the world's tiniest drunk and all but falls against Bucky's legs. He hoists her up into his lap and cuddles her close, and when Darcy pauses the television, he rubs at Steffie's back. "Are you awake enough to talk?" he asks.

She rubs at her face and yawns. "'Bout what?"

"About what we talked about at dinner."

She buries her face in his chest. "Don't wanna."

He squeezes her firmly, then chivvies her until she sits up, looking grumpy. "Just hear us out," he says, "and then you can watch _Elementary_ and we'll brush your teeth and have a story. Okay?"

She sighs heavily, but she does like Joan Watson a lot, so she says, "Okay."

Bucky looks over at Steve, who is sitting on his right. Steve holds out his hands. "Will you come sit with me?" he says. "I feel like I haven't seen you all day, and I could really use a hug."

Steffie goes to him immediately and he cuddles her close, resting his cheek on the top of her head. "So your Daddy says you were upset because you felt like you were intruding between Mikey and his mommy."

Steffie looks down at the bear in her hands and shrugs. It's enough of an answer on its own. Darcy, who has been sprawled in the armchair, gets up and comes to sit on the coffee table in front of Steve. She reaches out and tucks a finger under Steffie's chin. "Hey," she says. "How would you feel about it if I was your mommy, too?"

Steffie's head jerks up, her eyes going big. "You can do that?"

"Sure you can," Darcy says.

"How?" Steffie asks.

"Remember when we talked about how I found you in Iowa when you were very small and I brought you home and Uncle Tony's lawyers helped me do some paperwork and I adopted you?" When Steffie nods, he continues, "It would be like that. We would get the lawyers to help us do paperwork, and Darcy and Steve would adopt you."

She blinks at him. "Would you still be my Daddy?"

He reaches out and takes her hand. "I told you, Sweetheart, I will always be your Daddy, no matter what. If we do this, then instead of having just one Daddy, you'd have a Daddy and a Mommy and a Papa."

She swallows hard. "Mikey won't be mad?"

"Mikey won't ever know the difference," Steve assures her. "He's way too little to understand right now, and by the time he gets old enough, it will have always been this way and he won't care."

"Oh." Steffie thinks about this for a minute. Then she says, "Will... will it be forever?"

"If we adopt you?" Steve clarifies. Steffie nods, and he does too. "Yes. If we adopt you, it'll be forever. We'll always be your Papa and your Mommy, just like your Daddy will always be your Daddy."

"Okay," Steffie says. "I'd like that."

"Okay," Bucky says back, grinning and feeling a knot that he hadn't even known was inside his heart come undone. He reaches up and tweaks her nose. "I'll call the lawyer in the morning."

"Can we watch _Elementary_ now?" Steffie asks.

"Yes," Steve says. "We can."

When the show is over, Steffie slides off Steve's lap and heads into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she comes out, Darcy is waiting in her room to read her a story. And when the story is over, and Darcy turns out the light and leans over to press a gentle kiss to Steffie's forehead, Steffie whispers, "Night-night, Mommy," and closes her eyes to go to sleep.


	20. Please Have Snow and Lots of Mistletoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regardless of what you celebrate or don't celebrate, I wish every one of you peace and joy this holiday season. May you have everything you could possibly desire and more. <3

"I feel like this is a bad idea."

"This is a fantastic – here, Bucky, hold the baby – _fantastic_ idea. Just – Stephanie _Faith._ " Darcy's voice goes sharp on Steffie's middle name, and Steffie freezes in mid-step, one foot comically in the air. "Get back here _right now._ "

Steffie turns her back on the airport shop that she was about to enter, darting back to her parents. Steve grabs her around the waist and swings her up onto his hip. He touches her nose with his finger. "What did Mommy tell you about wandering off from us in the airport?"

"Don't do it," Steffie admits, burying her face against his collar bone.

"That's right," Steve says. "So that's a rule broken, which means a consequence. What's the consequence for wandering off?"

"I have to hold a hand and no dessert."

"That's right." Steve nods. "So you'll hold my hand or I'll carry you from now until we get to Memaw's house, and if Memaw tries to give you cookies, what do you say?"

"No, thank you, I'm not allowed to have cookies today."

"Good." Steve nods again. He turns back to Darcy. "You were saying, about this being a fantastic idea?"

Darcy sighs. "Look, at least we weren't flying commercial, thank Stark."

"True," Bucky agrees. He points. "There's the rental desk." He leans over and kisses her cheek. "Why don't we wait here with the kids while you get the car?"

"That's... actually a good idea," Darcy says. She gives him a grateful smile and strides quickly across to the Avis desk. In a few minutes, she's back with keys in her hand. "Come on," she says. "We're set."

They follow her out of the airport and across the parking lot to a shiny silver Acura. A car seat and a booster seat are already installed in the back seat; when Steve puts Steffie into the car, she clambers into the booster without complaint and allows Steve to buckle her in while Bucky settles Mikey into the car seat and secures him. Steve then slots himself into the back seat along with the kids. Bucky raises an eyebrow. "You okay back there?"

"I'm fine," he replies. "It's not that far. Let's just go."

Bucky shrugs. "Okay." He climbs into the shotgun seat while Darcy slides in behind the wheel. Everyone puts on their seat belts, and Darcy pulls out of the airport's parking lot and heads into the city.

Darcy's mother lives in a rambling three-story antebellum house in the historical district of downtown Mobile, Alabama. The house, which has been in the family for five generations, sits on half an acre of perfectly-manicured Saint Augustine grass, lined at the street with massive azalea bushes and boasting two massive live oak trees draped with thick Spanish moss. It is beautiful and imposing and Steve has honestly not felt more at home anywhere since the war. He and Bucky have met Darcy's mother and stepfather before – Andy and Dixie May Lewis Heller came to New York for Mikey's christening, which is how Steffie learned that she now had a Memaw and a Papaw and aunts and uncles and cousins – but this is the first time they have been to Mobile.

Within five minutes of entering the house, the five children around Steffie's age have discovered their new Uncle Bucky and his _super cool_ metal arm, and in the process have discovered their new Uncle Steve who is _totally Captain America oh my God;_ Steffie herself has been absorbed into this small gang of children, which has been chased out the back door by one of Darcy's sisters-in-law with strict instructions to stay in the yard and go get dirty; Mikey has been lifted neatly out of Steve's arms and whisked off to the giant kitchen to be passed around among his aunts and uncles along with two other infants who are both slightly younger than he; both of those infants – one girl, one boy – have been passed to Steve and Bucky to be admired; and the girl has spit up on Bucky, who merely laughed gently at her mortified mother and told the story of the first time Steffie spit up on him.

With that, Steve and Bucky are absorbed into the massive Lewis family. Neither of them had been quite certain what to expect; at best, Bucky had confessed to Steve one night, he felt like Darcy's family would grudgingly tolerate their unusual relationship. What actually happens is that nobody seems to care that the three of them are together; they are simply two more of Andy and Dixie May's sons-in-law. They're equally drafted to help with child-carrying, dish washing, cooking, and whatever else needs doing around the house, and the three of them share a single guest bedroom with a king sized bed and nobody even acts like it's out of the ordinary. Mikey sleeps in the room with them, in an antique bassinet; Steffie and the other ambulatory children are all bedded down together in sleeping bags on the massive screened-in porch that runs the length of the house on the left side.

Their third night in Mobile is Christmas Eve, and the entire family dresses up in their best for Midnight Mass at Little Flower Catholic Church, the parish in which Darcy and her siblings – and a few of her siblings-in-law – grew up. Mikey wears his first little suit ( _not_ Prada, despite Tony's objections, because no infant child needs a Prada suit) and Steffie wears an adorable red velvet dress with a bit of white lace trim, white tights, and black patent-leather shoes. Bucky French-braids her hair and ties it off with a red velvet ribbon.

The Lewis-Heller clan ends up taking up two full pews of the church, and when Steve finds himself automatically moving to separate Savannah's twin boys when they start shoving one another during the homily he realizes that he's not just been accepted as part of the family, but he has accepted it himself. He very nearly breaks down and cries at that moment. Fortunately, he's able to hold it together, and the urge passes by the time the offering plate goes around.

After Mass, they troop back home again – this time, with children sleeping on shoulders rather than prancing around knees – and the kids are all put to bed on the porch with gentle warnings to go back to sleep before Santa gets there. Once they are all asleep, there is a flurry of activity as parents rush to bring out hidden packages to place under the massive tree in the parlor. When the work finished – and the big French doors into the parlor locked against any early-rising little investigators – they all retire to the kitchen for a quiet glass of eggnog before heading to bed; it's going to be an early one.

Sure enough, it's barely past six when the first shouts come from downstairs. Steffie herself foregoes the shouting for the simple expedient of bursting through the door and leaping onto the bed – landing on Bucky, who was sleeping in the middle – and shouting, "Wake up! It's Christmas and Santa came!"

This, of course, startles Mikey out of a solid sleep, and he advertises his fury about the rude awakening at the top of his lungs. Darcy rolls out of bed and stumbles to the bassinet, scooping him up and tucking him against her shoulder to soothe him.

Bucky sits up and pulls Steffie to him, hugging her tight. "Merry Christmas, _zaichik_ ," he murmurs into her ear.

"Merry Christmas, Daddy," she whispers back, hugging him just as tightly. "I love you."

"I love you, too, sweetheart," he assures her. Then he drops a kiss on her temple. "Maybe Papa wants a Christmas hug, too, hmm?"

Steffie looks over at Steve, who holds out his arms, and she goes to him immediately, fairly leaping on him to hug him tight. "Merry Christmas, Papa!" she exclaims. "And you, too, Mommy!"

"Merry Christmas, baby," Darcy replies, laughing and coming around the bed to plant a kiss on the child's crown. "Did Santa come?"

"He _did,_ " Steffie exclaims. "Wait till you see! There's _so many presents._ "

"They're not all for you," Bucky warns. "Some of 'em are for Garland and Shelby and all your other cousins."

"I know _that,_ " Steffie replied easily. "But _some_ of them are for me, right, Daddy?"

He smiles. "Yes, baby, some of them are for you."

"Everybody up and at 'em!" Andy Heller's voice booms through the house. "Present time!"

Steve sighs softly and yawns; Darcy chuckles. "Might as well head on down," she says. "Otherwise he'll send someone up to get us." Steve sighs again, but sets Steffie aside and rolls out of bed, grabbing a tee shirt to pull on over his pajama pants. He tosses one to Bucky, who follows suit, and then grabs Darcy's robe from the hook on the back of the door, bringing it to her. He swaps her for Mikey, and she shrugs the robe on and belts it around her waist. Then they troop downstairs to join the rest of the family for presents.

When they head back to New York on the twenty-seventh, Steffie is the proud owner of – among a variety of small toys from aunts and uncles – a new American Girl doll from her Memaw and Papaw, several new sets of clothes that she desperately needed since she's been in a growth spurt, and a certificate good for one trip to the Humane Society to adopt a dog, redeemable after the first of January. Mikey has more new toys than any one small child will ever be able to play with. Darcy has a new coat she's been wanting and a bottle of French perfume. And Steve and Bucky, in addition to new clothes and other trinkets, have a new extended family that they never expected to find again.

All in all, they think, it was a pretty successful Christmas.


End file.
